Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1041944
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 OCTOBER 2018 NEWS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 This clear lack of communication riled some of those working on the investigation at this point, with Vella not even interviewing Cardona – who at this point had been conjured up as a potential suspect in the assassination plotline. Instead it was the police investigators who interviewed Cardona, who re- leased a statement to Inspector Keith Arnaud, the chief prosecutor in the criminal proceedings against the three murder suspects, denying having met Degiorgio but admitting being at the bar at the weekends. But the Cardona storyline was fur- ther reinforced in the last weeks when La Repubblica reported statements made to the investigators by witnesses who said they had seen Cardona at a bachelors' party at a Fawwara farm- house, in Siggiewi, during which Alfred Degiorgio was also pre- sent. In his statement to police this time, Cardona was asked to clarify a photograph of the party in ques- tion that had been passed on to the investigation: in it, the photo fea- tures four young men in a swimming pool, one of them the bachelor being celebrated, while in the background on the pool deck, Alfred Degiorgio can be seen as one of the invitees. Cardona is said to have stated he had not been invited to the party by the bachelor, the son of the owner of Fer- dinand's bar as it happens – but that he had been called over to the party by one of the invited patrons. Visiting the party at a late hour, Cardona left af- ter 10 minutes, denying having met or seen the accused at the party. Weeding out leaks But it has been the leaks from the magisterial inquiry to foreign press outlets that have riled police investi- gators, exposing a rift with the former magistrate tasked with harnessing the inquiry. Police sources complained that they could not trust some of the court ex- perts appointed to the inquiry: they in- cluded John Gera, a health and safety expert who has since resigned from the investigation after Magistrate Neville Camilleri took over the case; but also John Muscat, a security consultant who is also the brother of former PN cam- paign manager, now The Shift journal- ist Caroline Muscat; and former Secu- rity Service officer Roberto Critien. At one point, Magistrate Vella or- dered the call logs of all police offic- ers on the scene of the crime at Bid- nija, including the Commissioner of Police. But Vella did not order the confisca- tion of Caruana Galizia's laptop, which machine was later delivered months after the Daphne Project's revelations to German police; a move which had at the time prompted a judicial request by police for the laptop. When MaltaTo- day asked Vella in April why he had not seized the laptop, Vella could not an- swer, citing the ongoing investigation. Police investigators, who have been central in the collection of forensic evidence, mobile phone data and the identification of the murder suspects, were actually left in the dark about the magistrate's request to his court ex- perts to collect the phone call records of senior politicians, including Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposi- tion leader Adrian Delia, for the 12 months prior to the murder, as well as of other prominent public officials. Police investigators complained that information had been leaked from the inquiry, but it was not until the depar- ture of Magistrate Vella that it was pos- sible to identify the leak. Highly-placed officials working on the murder investigation fed inaccu- rate information to court experts in a bid to weed out those speaking to reporters and politicians. The move came just as Magistrate Neville Camilleri took over the inves- tigation in June 2018 after Vella was promoted to judge. The information concerned an alleged phone-call made by fishing boat owner Pierre Darmanin (see pages 4-5) to Caruana Galizia in 2016, after she named him in connec- tion with a smuggling investigation. In the last weeks La Repubblica re- ported information from within the in- quiry that Darmanin had called Carua- na Galizia to demand a rectification of what he wrote, then called Chris Car- dona and after murder suspect Alfred Degiorgio 'il-Fulu'. But last Sunday, the Malta Independ- ent reported a more precise account of the telephone data, effectively expos- ing the wrong information fed to La Repubblica: "While the call between Darmanin and the Degiorgios has been confirmed, there is no evidence of a call between Darmanin and Cardona. According to our sources investigators have found regular contacts between Darmanin and the Degiorgios in the logs." The TMID report effectively contra- dicted La Repubblica's account, osten- sibly having based itself on misleading information used to sniff out who was leaking the information. The TMID said that while it was not excluded that Cardona was contacted at an earlier or later stage on an un- known number, "Darmanin really did call brothers Alfred and George De- giorgio, two of the three men accused of killing the journalist, shortly after the phone call with the journalist." It also said it was Daphne Caruana Galizia who had called Darmanin, and not the other way round as Caruana Galizia had written, and that the call lasted 411 seconds (around seven min- utes). The call was placed on 31 Oc- tober 2016 at 14:29, according to the phone logs. Darmanin was ostensibly known to Caruana Galizia, given that her hus- band Peter Caruana Galizia was his lawyer in civil proceedings, at least up to March 2016, in a case instituted against him by his former partner Ra- chel Tua, a Labour candidate. La Repubblica journalist Carlo Bonini stuck by his story, citing the fact that Cardona had initially avoided giving the newspaper a comment justifying his presence at the Fawwara party. Investigators used misleading information to weed out leaks harming inquiry Main photo: Murder suspects Vincent Muscat il- Kohhu (second from left), George Degiorgio 'ic- Ciniz', and his brother Alfred Degiorgio 'il-Fulu', on the promontory overlooking the crime scene. Left: the La Repubblica report on the alleged call to Chris Cardona by Pierre Darmanin