Sandro Chetcuti, the head of Malta’s developers lobby, has denied having an office in the fourth floor of the Labour Party headquarters in the run-up to the 2013 general election, as alleged by Speaker and former Labour deputy leader Anglu Farrugia.

“I didn’t have an office in the fourth floor or any floor. I admit I was a protagonist in helping Labour get elected and I worked closely for businessmen to meet the party but I did not have an office as is being alleged,” the president of Malta Developers’ Association told Lovin Malta.

Speaking in the public inquiry into the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Farrugia claimed Chetcuti had an office on the infamous fourth floor, where several meetings with high profile business people and the planning for the general election took place.

Farrugia was called in by the board to explain a 2013 interview he gave to Times of Malta, where he expressed fears that the Labour Party was in bed with big business.

“Unfortunately, [I] was so loyal to Joseph Muscat that he gave him total leeway and didn’t realise [I] was being stabbed in the back. This is like calling your best friend over and then shooting him in cold blood. It was a political murder,” he said at the time.

While Farrugia was short on answers on the plethora of businesspeople in the Labour Party headquarters in the months and year leading up to the 2013 general election, he regularly mentioned one name.

“Sandro Chetcuti was there. I know this for certain because he had an office on the fourth floor,” he told the inquiry.

Farrugia, despite being Deputy Leader at the time, never had access to the fourth floor, even if the Labour Party’s forthcoming election bid was being planned within its walls.

“I always found it locked,” he told the inquiry board.

Farrugia was made to resign as Deputy Leader in December 2012.