Yorgen Fenech received an email on Valentine’s Day 2019 with a hotel room reservation for a week later, a court hearing a libel case filed by Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar heard on Monday. 

The email was presented to court by superintendent Keith Arnaud at the courtroom request of the defendant, former National Book Council chairman Mark Camilleri. 

Dated February 14, 2019 and concerning a booking made through Expedia, the email related to “matters” a week later, on February 21, Arnaud said. It had been easy to find through a keyword search among the “lots of business-related contents” of Fenech’s laptop, he added. 

Cutajar is suing Camilleri over statements he made about her on social media in which he alleged that the Labour MP received money from Fenech to publicly defend him and denigrate Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work. 

Camilleri has alleged that Cutajar and Fenech had a romantic affair. 

Times of Malta revealed last year how Cutajar had brokered a property deal for Fenech, pocketing tens of thousands which she never declared in the process. Cutajar lost her position as junior minister as a result. 

In Monday’s court hearing, magistrate Rachel Montebello declared that the email featuring the hotel reservation was to be kept under seal and was to be made accessible only to the parties and their lawyers. 

Cutajar’s lawyer requested a ban on Arnaud’s testimony, including the dates mentioned by the superintendent. But the court ruled against the request.

Former NBC chairman Mark Camilleri exits court earlier this year. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Meanwhile, Camilleri’s lawyer, Joseph Mizzi, informed the court that he was still waiting for a decree regarding an application he filed last month before the Criminal Court, seeking permission to present chats between Cutajar and Fenech as evidence in the libel case. 

“That will prove everything,” Mizzi told the court. 

The court asked about the third party mentioned as being involved in the communication.

Mizzi said that third party was not involved in the merits of the libel case but only in one particular chat in which Cutajar was also mentioned.

The Labour MP sat in the courtroom throughout the hearing.  Camilleri was not present.

Earlier on, just as Arnaud was about to testify, Cutajar’s lawyer, Edward Gatt, presented the court with a recent European Court of Justice judgement (Telekom Deutschland vs Germany) in which the court ruled that in some cases, revealing communication between people in which information about someone else’s private life was revealed was a breach of that person’s rights if the information did not concern issues of national security.  

Gatt presented a summary of that judgment, explaining that the case was identical to the one in hand and argued that allowing that email to be presented in court could be tantamount to a breach of Cutajar’s rights. 

The case continues in November.

Lawyer Mark Vassallo also assisted Cutajar.