Repubblika: Police Commissioner dragging his feet on Joseph Muscat’s arrest

Repubblika have accused the police commissioner of disobeying the direct orders of a magistrate by failing to arrest former prime minister Joseph Muscat and others following news reports detailing how money from the fraudulent sale of public hospitals was routed back to him.

In a press conference outside the court building, Robert Aquilina said he was shocked by revelations made about the hospitals deal in the past few hours.

He paid tribute to the memory of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been the first to question the deal.

“This morning’s revelations show that Joseph Muscat is implicated in a criminal conspiracy,” Aquilina said.

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“Joseph Muscat passed money to Vitals, who passed it on to Accutor, who passed it on Joseph Muscat and a Pakistani investor,” Aquilina told reporters. "This all smells suspiciously of money laundering. It is a textbook case of money laundering.”

He added that the way the transactions took place suggested ‘layering’, which is when illicit funds are moved from one company to another several times in order to obscure the true origin of the funds.

“All this confirms how right Repubblika was, four years ago, to request a magisterial inquiry into the fraudulent sale of Malta's hospitals,” Aquilina said.

Repubblika had filed a report to the police’s Financial Crimes Investigation Department in 2020, prompted by an article in the Times. Muscat’s house was subsequently searched by the police.

“But the police have resisted taking action against them,” he added. Aquilina laid the blame for this delay squarely on Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa.

“Angelo Gafa is the greatest obstacle to justice… He is now putting spokes in the wheels of work carried out by magistrates,” Aquilina said.

This was the reason for Repubblika’s application, filed yesterday in the acts of the inquiry into the hospitals deal, he said. The application requests, amongst other things, the immediate arrest of those involved in the fraud, Muscat amongst them, saying that this was necessary because they were “already making plans to abscond.”

Aquilina clarified that an inquiring magistrate can order an arrest but the arrest itself must be carried out by the police, stating that Gafa was refusing to obey the magistrate's order.