Bonnici mum on ministers involved in Gozo drug case

The justice minister would not say whether he had been asked by the Prime Minister if he had been one of two ministers, who in 2013 met at the Gozo ministry at night with the father of a person implicated in a drug trafficking case. 

MaltaToday revealed last month that following the meeting, a woman arrested by the police and who had identified two men who had supplied her with drugs, changed her statement so that the two men were no longer implicated. 

Owen Bonnici, who was addressing a press conference with Labour Party CEO Gino Cauchi, said that he first heard about the case from the article published by MaltaToday but would not say whether Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had asked him directly if he was involved. 

"There is an inquiry that is supposed to be concluded at any moment and we will wait for the outcome of that inquiry," he said. 

As to the Panama Papers scandal, Bonnici said it was not up to him – but the voting public – to decide if minister Konrad Mizzi and the PM's chief of staff Keith Schembri had done anything illegal when they opened secret accounts in Panama soon after the general election. 

Bonnici also insisted that people who do not have a right to vote in the next general election will definitely not be doing so, nor will people be voting more than once. 

"The identity card system used in Malta is based on information received by Identity Malta and includes innate measures to counter check any data received, before passing that information on to the electoral commission," he said. 

Bonnici said that a list of names published by The Malta Independent did not prove that those people could vote more than once, especially in the case of people with ID cards ending in A and who, as foreigners, cannot vote in the election. 

"In the case of a woman who had an ID card ending in P and was given another one ending in M, the system had immediately flagged the case and alerted the electoral commission," he said. 

"I wonder why the Nationalist Party is going to such efforts to try and introduce suspicion of tampering with the electoral system when the parties have always had full oversight of the electoral register."

Bonnici said that Opposition leader Simon Busuttil believes transparency is a value he can choose a' la carte as it is by now obvious he is in breach of party financing legislation.  

The minister said that one month after the Nationalist Party was revealed to have received money from db Group to pay the salaries of two top officials, the PN was still refusing to punish any invoices. 

Cauchi said that exactly one month ago, the falsehood of the Opposition leader became apparent when it was revealed that the Nationalist Party was issuing fake invoices to cover donations received.  

He recalled that Simon Busuttil had denied that the money received from db Group was donations but claimed that the money was paid for advertising, a claim that was immediately denied by db Group itself. 

Cauchi mentioned articles published in MaltaToday which revealed the identity of the companies which had paid the money to the PN and the total amounts donated to the party. 

"Simon Busuttil's behaviour this past month has shown him to be a liar and a fake who hides the truth even from those around him," he said.