The contractor who spilled the beans on the work for votes scandal in Gozo accused Opposition leader Simon Busuttil yesterday of trying to intimidate him.

Pledging to continue telling the truth about the entire saga, Joseph Cauchi said in a counter-protest that Dr Busuttil used a legal instrument to attack him and his credibility and had tried to exert pressure for him to change his version. This, he insisted, was “censurable and deplorable”.

In a judicial protest filed on Wednesday, Dr Busuttil described Mr Cauchi as a “self-confessed crook”, adding that what the whistleblower had said under oath was “sheer nonsense”. Dr Busuttil also accused him of lying, insisting Mr Cauchi should have his privileges as a whistleblower revoked. When he testified on Tuesday in the compilation of evidence against Anthony Debono, husband of former Gozo minister Giovanna Debono, Mr Cauchi said Dr Busuttil had asked him why he accepted jobs for the Gozo Ministry if he knew the Nationalist Party would not be re-elected.

In his counter-protest, Mr Cauchi accused Dr Busuttil of potentially acting in breach of the law by attempting to intimidate a witness and, in this particular case, someone who was protected under the Whistleblower Act.

Through his lawyer, Robert Abela, Mr Cauchi said he had received special protection under the law to tell the truth as he “had done so far and intends to do in the future”.

He said it was “interesting” that Dr Busuttil had stated that his testimony confirmed what the PN leader had said publicly and later filed a judicial protest accusing him of lying under oath and that this amounted to defamation. Such “contradictory” positions were “unexplainable”, Mr Cauchi said.

“This serious and dangerous behaviour amounts to interference with the judicial process that was not in the best administration of justice. [Dr Busuttil] knows it is up to the magistrate to judge the credibility of the witness and he cannot expect to be given this role,” he said.

Rejecting Dr Busuttil’s accusations, Mr Cauchi warned he would not withdraw any part of his testimony.

In a press conference yesterday, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici accused Dr Busuttil of attacking the country’s institutions, which, he insisted, had “to be defended from an unprecedented attack”.