Simon Busuttil this evening spoke for the first time about a meeting he held with Yorgen Fenech, the man who is now charged with masterminding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder.

The former PN leader said he met Fenech in October 2013, just six months after he was appointed Opposition leader, and the meeting did not end well.

“He contacted me… He came with Mark Gasan to convince me to stop criticising the power station project. I remember Karol Aquilina was with me. It did not go well,” Busuttil said in an interview with Mark Laurence Zammit on TVM.

“They did not convince me. They just strengthened my conviction that this project did not make sense and was directy. I didn’t know why at the time, but today we do… It was the only time I met him,” he said, with a reference to his diary.

Busuttil noted that Fenech owned a secret Dubai company 17 Black which was planning to deposit former OPM Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and former Minister Konrad Mizzi €2 million per year.

Asked about the pardons being requested by the Degiorgio brothers involved in the murder of Caruana Galizia, Busuttil said they should not be given presidential pardons but they should voluntarily share the information they know as a means of repayment for all the harm they had done to Malta.

Busuttil also pointed out that Schembri has been named several times by people involved in the case and he also told a court that he never did anything behind Joseph Muscat’s back.

“So if Keith Schembri knew, Joseph Muscat knew too,” he said.