Galea Curmi visited Balzan home, but not as ‘family friend’

The mother of MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan was today summoned as a witness in a defamation case, to confirm that Lawrence Gonzi’s former head of secretariat Edgar Galea Curmi had visited Balzan’s residence to pass on an envelope with details about former Alternattiva Demokratika chairperson Harry Vassallo.

Antoinette Balzan appeared as a witness in the defamation suit filed against Balzan by Galea Curmi, over Balzan’s claims in his column that the chief of staff had asked him to carry a story about Vassallo’s pending VAT dues, a few days before the 2008 election.

The story was published by the Nationalist media in the run-up to the 2008 election, when Vassallo was charged by the police over VAT dues that had not been paid during the winding-up of a company.

Antoinette Balzan told the court that at the time, she was present in Balzan’s home with other family members when his late wife had been ill. “Galea Curmi arrived with an envelope – it was February 2008 – and all I know is that they talked for a while in my son’s sitting room. When he left, my son told me that ‘he’ came to give me a story on Harry Vassallo.”

Asked by the defendant’s lawyer if she knew what the story was about, she answered that she did not.

She confirmed that she had never met Galea Curmi but knew him as a public person, and that he had not visited Balzan’s wife. “Only the close family would see her and he was not a family friend.”

During cross-examination, the plaintiff’s lawyer Michael Zammit Maempel asked whether she was aware that Galea Curmi had shown or extended any help regarding Balzan’s wife.

“She received the same kind of treatment anyone would receive at Boffa Hospital, no different to anyone else,” Balzan said.

She confirmed that Galea Curmi’s sister worked with her at the same school and that she might have expressed concern at one point about her daughter-in-law’s illness.

On a question by defence lawyer Toni Abela that blogger and Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia had quoted Galea Curmi in her blog in saying that he had visited Saviour Balzan as a family friend to extend his concern for his wife, Antoinette Balzan said she did not read anyone’s blog, but that she had heard about this.

“Galea Curmi surely did not visit because of my son’s wife. No one outside of the family would visit his wife.”