Gaffarena, former health minister mum on relationship

Property entrepreneur Joe Gaffarena and former health minister Joe Cassar have chosen to remain silent over their relationship, when contacted by MaltaToday.

The two were contacted after Gaffarena filed an affidavit saying that Cassar had called him to set up a meeting with then PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil. The meeting took place in November 2012 at the PN headquarters.

Asked by MaltaToday to explain his relationship with Cassar and how he ended up being called by the former minister to meet Busuttil, Gaffarena said he had no comments to give.

“I really don’t have anything to add to what I stated in the affidavit,” Gaffarena said. The affidavit was first reported by l-Orizzont which is now facing a third libel filed by the PN leader over its report.

Cassar himself issued a denial via the Nationalist Party’s communications office denying the contents of the report. Cassar insisted that the “truth will out” in court through the libel cases instituted by Busuttil.

“I said what I had to say in my statement today. I will no doubt be confirming that in court during the libel proceedings,” the Nationalist MP told MaltaToday when asked to define his relationship with Gaffarena and whether he would be taking any legal action against him.

“[…] I confirm that Joe Cassar had called me five months before the general election and asked me to go to the PN headquarters to meet Simon Busuttil and to take all my papers,” Gaffarena said in the affidavit.

According to Gaffarena, the papers in question were allegedly files pertaining to the Daewoo scandal.

When questioned over Busuttil’s and Cassar’s denial, Gaffarena simply said: “They will have to testify in the courts of law.”

The affidavit over the Busuttil-Gaffarena meeting has sent both parties into overdrive over which party has grovelled the most to the property entrepreneurs, whose assets include the Qormi petrol pump which was sanctioned only recently.

“The Opposition leader is in a state of panic,” the Labour Party claimed in a statement, adding that “if he had nothing to hide he would have immediately declared it.” 

Busuttil has since filed five libel suits against l-Orizzont and It-Torca, which are both printed by the General Workers’ Union, and the Labour Party.

The PL said that Busuttil had already denied meeting the whistleblower over the private works commissioned by Gozo minister Giovanna Debono’s husband Anthony Debono, paid by the ministerial budget. “Busuttil later admitted to the meeting, and instead of revealing the PN administration’s abuse, he told the whistleblower he should have stopped from doing the works when the PN was clearly headed for an electoral loss. In this case, Busuttil is denying having requested certain documentation so that Gaffarena’s permit could be issued.”

“The PN has no problem in filing these defamation suits because it has nothing to hide. In these last two years, Labour has been engulfed by scandal, and an ever-widening net of corruption. The recent Mallia inquiry clearly showed the ties between Castille, power, criminality and money, leaving no doubt as to the way this government is being run,” the PN said in a reference to Judge Michael Mallia’s report on former police inspector Daniel Zammit.

According to the inquiry the former officer, son of former acting police commissioner Ray Zammit, stalled a court’s compilation of evidence in the murder charges against the son-in-law of Joe Gaffarena, with whom Zammit and his father Ray (former police chief) had a business relationship.