Former deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta has said he is seeking legal advice after convicted murderer Vince Muscat implicated him as a leaker of confidential information. 

“For the umpteenth time, I categorically deny that I ever passed on any kind of information to anyone,” Valletta said in a statement. “Vince Muscat is lying when is saying (as reported) that he had known I was passing on information. I will be speaking to my lawyers about action I can take on this lie that has been reported.”

Muscat was in court today to testify in the case against Yorgen Fenech, the man charged with conspiring to assassinate Daphne Caruana Galizia.

He said that his fellow hitmen, brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, had been tipped off that police were going to raid their Marsa potato hideout on 4th December 2017.

Muscat said that while the Degiorgios never told him where they were getting their information from, he “knew” that Valletta was leaking information.

In previous testimony against the Degiorgios, Muscat implicated Valletta as the source of information on crucial details like Caruana Galizia’s whereabouts in the lead-up to her murder and the imminent arrests of the three hitmen.

Media reports and court sittings have revealed that Valletta had an intimate relationship with main Yorgen Fenech, going abroad with him on at least two occasions. There also exists a video of Valletta “fooling around” in Fenech’s Rolls Royce.

It has also been revealed that Valletta features heavily in middleman Melvin Theuma’s secret recordings, in particular with relation to leaks from the police investigation.

These details included the arrest of the three men charged with carrying out the murder, Muscat’s potential pardon, information that Theuma’s and Yorgen Fenech’s phones were wiretapped, and that Chris Cardona’s number was discovered on the phone of one of Daphne’s killers.

Valletta, who is referred to as “Valletta l-oħxon” in Theuma’s secret recordings of Fenech, was leading the case into the assassination until he was forcibly removed by court order.

He was the one who set up unprecedented briefings with former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Schembri on the case. The briefings started soon after the murder and continued up until a month before Theuma’s arrest.

Valletta stepped away from the force in 2019.

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