Prime Minister Joseph Muscat offered former Police Commissioner John Rizzo any position he wanted and a €10,000 consultancy to sweeten the deal, Rizzo told the public inquiry into the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination.

Rizzo served as Police Commissioner for a lengthy tenure under successive administrations. However, he was made to step down on 13th April 2013, just a month after the Labour Party won the general election.

Rizzo, who would eventually go on to head the Civil Protection Department, revealed that Muscat personally offered him any job he wanted.

He initially wanted to be head of Malta’s Secret Services. However, Keith Schembri told him to forget it and move on to CPD.

“When it came to the €10,000 consultancy, I refused it out of principle,” Rizzo told the inquiry.

The former police commissioner’s removal has long raised eyebrows, having served admirably and pursued cases in the executive level corruption through the Oil Scandal.

Meanwhile, he revealed that at the time, the police were pursuing a case against former EU Commissioner John Dalli for his role in an alleged €60 million bribe from Swedish Match, the main producer of Swedish snus.

Rizzo revealed that investigators and the Attorney General had enough evidence to prosecute Dalli and were planning to arrest and interrogate him the moment he returned to Malta from Brussels.

He informed former Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia that investigators planned to prosecute. Rizzo was removed a week later, a week before Dalli’s arrival in Malta.

Meanwhile, within three days of being appointed, Rizzo’s successor Peter Paul Zammit ruled there was not enough evidence to continue with the case.