Malta’s former Police Commissioner has come out swinging to deny an MP’s claims that he was involved in a plot to force a tax official to resign through bogus arrests. 

Yesterday, MP Jason Azzopardi told parliament that shortly after the Labour Party’s electoral win in 2013 head of the Public Service Mario Cutajar conspired to remove the official, who arrested on the orders of then-Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit. 

He said the official was kept overnight and even subject to a “humiliating strip search”. However, the concerns were eventually rubbished by prosecuting inspector, current Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa. 

Writing on social media, Peter Paul Zammit said that Azzopardi was “lying behind the curtain of parliamentary privilege”, calling on the right to be removed. 

“This is lies and dirt from those who should know better,” he said. 

Zammit went on to say Azzopardi was a peddler of fake news. 

Azzopardi has used parliamentary privilege in the past to make similar sensational claims, mostly related to the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination. He has been mocked in the past, but these claims have often proved correct.

Speaking in parliament, Azzopardi said that a file documenting the arrest and the detention log was discovered.  However, it is unknown where the documents are, Azzopardi said.

The official’s lawyer at the time was current Prime Minister Robert Abela.

Azzopardi said that Abela knows the case and the issues regarding Mario Cutajar well, demanding that he take action.

He claimed that failure to do so would prove that Abela is a continuation of the issues that plagued his predecessor, Joseph Muscat.

Cutajar’s brother, Aldo, has been arrested and charged with money laundering after police discovered €500,000 in cash during a raid on his home and a further $400,000 in a Dubai bank account.

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