[WATCH] Cardona was arrested over 2010 HSBC heist, Azzopardi declares in House

The Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi has claimed in the House of Representatives that former Labour minister Chris Cardona was arrested by the Maltese police in 2010 in connection with the botched heist on the HSBC headquarters.

In a speech in the House of Representatives, Azzopardi warned government MPs they had to reckon with the prospect that a member of their government was involved with the mafia on a string of crimes.

“Cardona was arrested by former police commissioner John Rizzo… and Joseph Muscat knew this, and still appointed him minister… and who was the only person who went to visit Muscat when he resigned in November 2019? Chris Cardona.”

At the time, Cardona was an MP in the Labour opposition.

Azzopardi also claimed that a sitting minister has been implicated by one or more of the hitmen in the Caruana Galizia assassination, by having provided replicas of the keys to the HSBC headquarters in Qormi and a plans of where to locate the vault.

“Castille is the heart of a mafia!” Azzopardi charged in the House.

Azzopardi said Prime Minister Robert Abela had lied about Vince Muscat ‘il-Kohhu’ not having implicated either former or sitting ministers in the 2010 heist.

Chris Cardona’s former law firm partner, David Gatt, had been charged and later acquitted of being the mastermind in the heist. Vincent Muscat ‘il-Kohhu’ and Fabio Psaila are still accused of carrying out the heist.

David Gatt has been mentioned by Muscat, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail after pleading guilty to the Daphne Caruana Galizia, of having egged on the alleged hitmen to get rid of the journalist, as well of knowing of their involvement in the 2017 car bomb that killed her.

Cardona resigned from Labour in the summer of 2020.

Addressing Robert Abela as “the former lawyer of the Maksar brothers”, Azzopardi asked: “Can you give us peace of mind and tell us the last time you were in contact, even on Signal or Messenger, with Robert and Adrian Agius? Why do they reportedly have the power to bring down the government?”

“You have three hitmen now alleging that a sitting minister and an ex-minister carried out a crime, with them. Muscat filed a judicial protest saying that the PM had a sitting minister involved in a major crime…

“Now those who had tea after murdering a journalist, are inviting the State to have tea… but the homicide of Caruana Galizia cannot be currency to be exchanged by the people who carried out the crime, to evade justice,” Azzopardi said.