“But conveniently, in his mischievous manner Azzopardi fanned only one part of the report which pinned suspicion on a certain entrepreneur and for a very short time this was taken up by the media until it was clear that the allegation was far-fetched,” he wrote.

“This report was given to Azzopardi by someone in the courts. By whom I do not know. I can guess who but that is what it will be – just a guess.”

“All I can say is that I have seen this report, and if I was one of those infamous bloggers I would surely have splashed its contents with all the raunchy details on social media,” he wrote.

“But I am not one of those bloggers, I am a mainstream media owner. Neither will I be intimidated by messages on Signal from those who believe they can tell me what to write or say or what not to say.”

Europol had handed the report in to the magisterial inquiry in May 2018 but it has somehow gone missing from the inquiry’s records. Magistrate Rachel Montebello recently ordered Europol experts to return to court to present this document as evidence.

Besides Balzan, university lecturer Simon Mercieca – one of Fenech’s most impassioned defenders in the media – has also allegedly seen this Europol report.

Last year, Mercieca reported that the Europol report names Caruana Galizia’s husband Peter Caruana Galizia as a suspect, alongside Keith Schembri.

If Balzan is telling the truth about Azzopardi being the leaker, that would naturally imply that Azzopardi had shown the report to Balzan and Mercieca himself.

That would make Balzan and Mercieca among Azzopardi’s “trusted journalists” that Balzan had referred to in his article. If this is the case, that would imply that something happened to seriously breach this trust since then, although not enough for either of them to actually out Azzopardi as their own source.

Alternatively, someone else leaked the report to Balzan and Mercieca.

Why do you think this report went missing?