Austin Gatt apologises over ‘frame-up’ allegation from 2013 election

Former minister Austin Gatt has issued an apology and withdrawn his allegations that emails published during the 2013 oil scandal in which he was implicated, had likely been part of an effort by the Labour Party to frame him.

At the time, Gatt had said he had proof that a Labour MP and two candidates were connected to the case.

During a press conference, Gatt had claimed that Labour candidate David Farrugia Sacco was the defence lawyer for the Farrugia brothers, owners of the John’s Group, who had filed a court action in 2010 against George Farrugia, the businessman at the heart of the oil scandal.

He had also claimed to have been informed that lawyer Manuel Mallia, also a Labour candidate at the time, had also represented the Farrugia brothers against George Farrugia whilst also forming part of the investigative team which discovered these emails.

READ MORE ‘Replicated’ email that Gatt will report to police for inconsistent formatting

Gatt had also accused Labour MP Evarist Bartolo of circulating an email at the centre of the controversy, which had originally been published by MaltaToday, but then appeared to have been amended when it hit social media.

Criminal libel proceedings were subsequently filed against the former PN minister on the complaint of Bartolo, Mallia and Farrugia Sacco.

In a sitting before magistrate Francesco Depasquale, Gatt declared that he had “absolutely not used” the word frame-up in the complainants’ regard and said he was sorry that his words had been interpreted in that way.

Gatt apologised unreservedly for his words, saying he had had no intention of injuring the men’s reputations.

The complainants informed the court that they were satisfied with the apology. As a result, the court held that the case could no longer proceed.

‘Replicated’ email saga

As the Enemalta oil scandal unfolded in the run-up to the 2013 general election, Transport minister Austin Gatt had declared he would be filing a police report against the Labour Party, accusing them of manipulating an email circulating on Facebook, an email whose contents were first published in MaltaToday on Wednesday.

The offensive email had been published in The Times’ print edition of Thursday, 14 February, but was replicated from a reproduction of MaltaToday’s email that was first posted on Facebook, although it was duly captioned as being a replica.

However the original typos appearing in the MaltaToday email had been given a spellcheck and reformatting.

When The Times explained the error in the reproduction, Gatt insisted that he would still go to the Commissioner of Police on Friday morning to report the alleged ‘fabrication’ of the email - the Facebook one - claiming that “only Labour stood to benefit” from the “frame-up”.

“I have a suspicion that this is a frame-up, because I believe Labour is behind it. I still think it is valid to go to the police... since this matter is in Labour’s interest, the natural suspicion falls on Labour.”