Jason Azzopardi guilty of libel over HSBC heist claims about Carmelo Abela

Updated at 11:47am with judgment details

A court ordered Lawyer Jason Azzopardi to pay €7,000 in libel damages over his Facebook statement about former minister Carmelo Abela, in which Azzopardi had accused Abela of providing assistance to the robbers who had carried out the 2010 HSBC heist.

The court condemned the irresponsible way in which the defendant proceeded, stating that instead of reporting to the competent authorities and exercising the expected diligence before publishing a specific imputation of fact regarding the complicity of the plaintiff in a major crime, he published his opinion regarding why he believed he was right to come to that conclusion.

Although the statements were made with a rhetorical tone, and the defendant did not use the express words that Carmelo Abela was guilty of complicity in the crime of the HSBC bank hold-up, the inference generated in a manifest way from the publication, when read in its entirety, and which was easily understood by the ordinary reader without any stretch of the imagination, was that the accomplice to whom the imputed statements referred was none other than Carmelo Abela.

The euphemistic and suggestive tone used by Azzopardi in his statements did not reduce anything from the defamatory imputation that arose from the defendant's statements regarding the plaintiff's complicity in the hold-up crime.

Contrary to what was submitted by the defendant in the submissions note, the fact that the plaintiff did not take legal steps of any kind against George Degiorgio and/or Alfred Degiorgio in connection with the public statements they made regarding the involvement of persons, including the plaintiff himself, in the crime of the hold-up, and the fact that he did not deny their statements, did not mean that the impugned publication was not defamatory and did not reduce in any way the inference of serious damage to his reputation, caused by the publication.

This was also stated because, from the evidence before the court, it appeared that the statements made by the Degiorgio brothers, where the plaintiff was expressly mentioned by name, were made after the defendant's publication on 9 April 2021, which was the subject of this action.

Above all, Azzopardi did not dispute that the impugned statements referred to the plaintiff and did not deny that the plaintiff was identified as the person who in the same publication was said to have been an accomplice in the hold-up crime by, among other things, providing the agent with means to be used in the commission of the crime. His defense was based almost exclusively on justifying his view that the plaintiff was involved in the said crime.

It was the view of the court that the defendant failed to satisfy the requirement indicated in the Media and Defamation Act by failing to indicate, even in general, the basis of his statement that the plaintiff was the accomplice who helped the thieves in the commission of the crime by providing means, including fake keys, and was going to be compensated for this complicity. Consequently, the defense could not succeed.

The court reaffirmed that the right to freedom of expression could never be interpreted as giving protection to those who publish imputations capable of, or effectively destroying, an individual's reputation without making sure that there was a concrete and objectively recoverable factual basis for those imputations. In conclusion, the court was of the opinion that it should liquidate the sum of seven thousand euros (€7,000) as moral damages.

Azzopardi made the allegation in a Facebook status he posted, which was a reaction to disparaging comments made by Abela on Azzopardi over an ethics investigation concerning the minister.

“I am no saint... but better not to have been an accomplice in the HSBC hold-up,” Azzopardi said.

Azzopardi claimed that Abela was promised €300,000 from the loot, accusing Abela of having been an accomplice of the HSBC heist’s mastermind by passing on internal footage of the HSBC headquarters and assisting them in accessing the building. Abela denied the claims.

Abela had repeatedly denied the allegations which were first mooted by Vincent Muscat “Il-Koħħu”, who had claimed that a sitting minister had been an accomplice in the hold up. He also claimed that Carmelo Abela and Chris Cardona had “given instructions in order for the heist at HSBC’s Head Office to go ahead.”

Shortly after, Abela had filed the defamation lawsuit, demanding that Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi answer for his claims.

In reaction to the court verdict, Abela uploaded a snippet of the court judgement to Facebook, and said “justice was served today”.

Prime Minister Robert Abela also reacted to the verdict, saying there is no room for mudslinging in Maltese society.  

Meanwhile, Jason Azzopardi said that he will appeal the court verdict and is ready to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

“The truth is immutable and immanent. The whole truth must come out,” he wrote.

Lawyer Pawlu Lia assisted Abela, while Azzopardi was represented by Lawyer Zammit Maempel. The case was presided over by Magistrate Rachel Montebello.