Economy Minister Chris Cardona has told The Malta Independent that he filed a request for the removal of garnishee orders against slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia days after her grizzly murder.
Cardona was asked by this newspaper to react to statements made in Parliament on Tuesday evening.
Garnishee orders were instituted by Cardona and his aide Joe Gerada against Caruana Galizia in February of this year after she made a series of scathing allegations, which were vehemently denied by the former. The requests were approved by the courts, which led to some €47,460 being frozen in the bank account of Caruana Galizia.
While Parliament was discussing the second version of the Media and Defamation Bill on Tuesday evening, Nationalist Party (PN) MP Beppe Fenech Adami harshly criticised Cardona for supporting the government bill which would no longer allow people to file garnishee orders against journalists, while at the same time having two orders in place against Caruana Galizia.
"What use is it removing precautionary warrants when only a few months ago, a Cabinet minister filed one against a journalist," said Fenech Adami told Parliament.
Asked for a reaction to the claims, Cardona said:
"Had Dr Beppe Fenech Adami had the decency to check facts prior to making parliamentary statements, he would have realised that through my lawyers I filed a request for the garnishee orders to be removed a few days after the tragic death of Mrs. Daphne Caruana Galizia. However, unlike my counterparts from the Opposition I did not feel, due to the sensitivity of the circumstances, that I should make any public statements that could possibly be spinned or interpreted as me trying to get political mileage from the situation."
Caruana Galizia had alleged that on 30 January, when Cardona and Gerada were on a state visit in Germany, the pair had visited a brothel named FKK Acapulco in a town called Velbert. Cardona and his aide vehemently denied the claims, while others criticised the controversial journalist for releasing the story without any pictures to accompany the allegations. She claimed a credible source had spotted the pair at the brothel.
This prompted Cardona and Gerada to file two libel cases each, and request precautionary warrants worth the maximum possible damages awarded at law, roughly €11,750. When the news broke, a crowd-funding website was set up to cover the €47,460 frozen in Caruana Galizia's bank accounts. Close to €70,000 was raised in just a few days.
After her brutal murder on 16 October, the money remained frozen with her husband and sons expected to continue defending the cases instituted by Cardona.
During the course of the libel proceedings, Caruana Galizia's legal defence had filed a court application to preserve the phone records of Cardona and Gerada on the night in question, because had they switched on roaming while they were allegedly at or within the vicinity of the brothel, this would be traceable through mobile communication records.
This was objected to by Cardona's legal defence, however the court ultimately upheld the request.
Following the murder of Caruana Galizia, at another court hearing on the libel case instituted by the minister, her son boldly said that Cardona has "an interest" in stopping the case from proceeding and that the family is ready to continue the case in their mother's name.
At law, when somebody files for libel against a person and that person passes away, those who instituted the case have the option to drop it or continue against the deceased person's family members.
PN leader Adrian Delia was criticised for dropping the libel cases instituted against Caruana Galizia due to claims she made of serious impropriety, with his detractors saying that through such a move, the truth will never see the light of day.
In addition to Delia, chairperson of the Malta Council of Science and Technology Jeffery Pullicino Orlando also dropped a libel case against the slain journalist which had previously been instituted due to comments she allowed to appear under a blog-post about him. He had remarked that it would be insensitive to continue a libel case of that nature in light of the gruesome events that took place.
All other libel cases against Caruana Galizia are ongoing.
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2AeVZSa
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