The office of the Prime Minister’s former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri was unguarded for up to two days following his arrest in connection with the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Meanwhile, it was worryingly revealed that investigators only went to conduct a search on 5th December almost a week and a half after Schembri’s arrest on 27th November.

Speaking under oath, Lead Inspector Keith Arnaud confirmed that he was only “informed” that Schembri’s office was secured, and failed to ever send a police officer to stand guard of an office that could have been a crucial point of information.

Rather, Arnaud relied on Schembri’s successor, Mark Farrugia, to assure him that the office was locked.

The reveal brought widespread disbelief in the court, with Magistrate Rachel Montebello also seemingly incredulous to the glaring error from Malta’s investigators.

Meanwhile, issues surrounding Schembri’s ‘lost’ mobile the day of his arrest were also raised, namely by lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who is representing the Caruana Galizia family.

While Arnaud insisted that investigators are looking at phone data to locate the phone, he would later reveal that Schembri was non-compliant to provide information.

He flatly refused investigators request for him to hand over his passwords to his email accounts and iCloud.

“We asked him about his phone, and he said he lost it, but then we asked him for passwords for the cloud, his email, but to this day he did not provide any passwords because of sensitive work emails,” Arnaud told the court.

The treatment of Schembri differs greatly from the work done by investigators with regard to Fenech. Today in court, a number of officers detailed how they immediately secured Fenech’s office and apartment, while also keeping police on guard

The data collected so far has at least confirmed that Schembri did call Doctor Adrian Vella, the night before his arrest in connection with passing on messages from Schembri to Fenech, while the former was out on police bail.

There were also some revelations about Fenech’s phone in court, with investigators revealing that all his electronic devices are not in their possession but in the hands of Europol, who are the court-appointed experts on the matter.