Malta’s Attorney General is under the spotlight yet again over alleged inaction following claims that he told police that there was no legal basis to seal off Pilatus Bank the night infamous allegations on then-Prime Ministers links to Egrant emerged.

“The advice not to intervene when [Pilatus Bank Chairman] Ali Sadr went to the bank was given directly by the attorney general to [former Deputy Police Commissioner] Silvio Valletta. The reason given was that there was no justification at law for the police to intervene simply because the bank’s owner went to his bank,” sources told the Times of Malta.

On April 20, 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia claimed that the owner of Egrant, an offshore Panamanian account, could be found in a safe at the bank’s office in Ta’ Xbiex. She would later say that the owner of the company belonged to Michelle Muscat, the wife of the former Prime Minister. An inquiry would find no wrongdoing in their regard.

The inquiry did find that Sadr did remove a document from the bank on his late-night visit, caught on tape by Net News. The document was given to him by the Pilatus Bank’s former chief operating officer, Luis Felipe Rivera.

Police sealed off the bank a day later.

Authorities have long faced claims of inaction that evening with the then-Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar caught on tape at a fenkata in Mgarr while Sadr was at the bank.

Grech told the Times of Malta that he could not disclose legal advice. He said that media allegations were not enough to justify arrests or other serious action.

The AG is facing criticism elsewhere over the case. Quoting two sources, the Times of Malta reported that Grech had sent a note to police warning that following up on the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit’s advice to conduct a seizure of Nexia BT data would be “highly intrusive” and “counterproductive”.

He said that police should demand a “high level of reasonable suspicion” before such a measure would be justified.

Former Economic Crimes Unit Ian Abdilla has confirmed that investigators feared that they could face legal action if they seized Nexia BT’s servers over their involvement in the Panama Papers with no evidence of wrongdoing.

Nexia BT is the accountancy firm that set up the offshore Panamanian accounts of former Minister Konrad Mizzi and former Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri.

Caruana Galizia was the journalist first to reveal the existence of the secret companies.

The revelations would eventually lead to journalists uncovering that 17 Black, a target client of the Panamanian companies, belonged to Yorgen Fenech, the man accused of murdering Caruana Galizia. Fenech’s company is also linked to the controversial Enemalta purchase of a Montenegrin windfarm.

Grech has been facing renewed calls for his resignation ever since the first hints of the memo were revealed during the public inquiry into the assassination of Caruana Galizia. Prime Minister Robert Abela has not excluded his removal.

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