Prime Minister: ‘I Want Justice Served Against Cowards Behind Egrant Frame-Up’
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has said he is awaiting justice to be served against those people behind the infamous allegations that the Panama company Egrant belonged to his wife.
“Don’t you think my family and I aren’t the first to ask whether this [case] has been forgotten?” Muscat told a political rally in Mosta. “I will never forget driving through Mosta and seeing a large banner of myself and my wife behind bars. I will never forget how my daughter asked me what will become of her if we do end up in jail.”
“To the person or people behind this frame-up, to the coward who tried to destabilise the country and precipitated a general election, I tell you that I’m not after vindication but justice. However, I won’t impose pressure on the investigation because I understand the limitations of my institutional role as Prime Minister and I won’t interfere in their work.”
In 2017, now-assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia claimed the Prime Minister’s wife Michelle Muscat owned the Panama company Egrant, prompting the Prime Minister to request a magisterial inquiry call a general election, which he won by a landslide. A year later, the magisterial inquiry found no evidence connecting Egrant to the Prime Minister and his wife and declared an alleged declaration of trust provided as having forged signatures.
This document was handed to magistrate Aaron Bugeja by Pierre Portelli, back then the editor-in-chief of The Malta Independent and now head of media at the Nationalist Party.
Only the conclusion of the report has been published but the full report is in the hands of the police.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court will next week rule on a request by Opposition leader Adrian Delia to force the Attorney General to publish the full report.
In today’s speech, Muscat said he intends to publish the report but doesn’t want to risk jeopardising police investigations.
“The Attorney General has warned me that publishing the report now would give an advantage to the people under investigation,” he said.
He noted that Delia had recently reported the alleged forging of his signature on an old company document to the police but had refused to publish the document on the grounds that it could jeopardise the investigation.
“The Opposition leader doesn’t want this document to be published but wants the entire [Egrant] report to be published,” Muscat quipped. “My political intention is to publish the report as I had promised, but the question is when.”
Cover photo: Joseph and Michelle Muscat share a kiss at Labour’s mass meeting on 1st May
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