Former Police Commissioner Michael Cassar resigned from his post less than three weeks after receiving an FIAU report on Keith Schembri, Cassar has revealed to the public inquiry into the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The investigation, codenamed ‘Operation Green’, focused on serious allegations that Schembri received a €100,000 kickback on the sale of passports from Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna.

Cassar received file number CID/0442/E/16 on 6th April 2016. He went abroad the next day. While on his trip, he said he suffered from severe chest pains and resigned from his post shortly after on 27th April 2016.

Lawrence Cutajar, the current police commissioner, was his replacement.

While Cassar pleaded with the inquiry board that he was already planning to resign the December prior, he began getting flustered and requested that the rest of his testimony occurs behind closed doors.

Questions will remain whether he was pressured to step down.

The report into Schembri concerns claims that Tonna transferred two €50,000 payments through Pilatus Bank to Schembri in what is believed to have been part of the scheme.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing and said the €100,000 was the repayment of a personal loan given to Tonna by Schembri while the former underwent separation proceedings.

The loan was repaid through Willerby Trading, a British Virgin Islands shell company secretly owned by Tonna.

The same FIAU report also raised suspicions of the loan document presented to the bank to justify the payments after finding no trace of the original loan payment by Schembri to Tonna.

In May 2017, Maltese authorities launched a judicial investigation into the payments. The inquiry is on-going.