Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501361
6 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 14 JUNE 2023 NEWS NEWS Man fined €50 over Facebook 'threat' to economy minister Silvio Schembri Court throws out claim by activist who said Cardona tweet affected job chances MATTHEW AGIUS A man's reply to a Facebook post, quoting the economy minister, landed him in trouble with the law after the minister reported it to the po- lice. Simon Cutajar had posted a comment under a Facebook post by minister Silvio Schembri, which quoted the minister's address to a press conference about the Nationalist Party's elec- toral proposals for the business community in March 2022. The tagline was "mal-PN ma tafx x'se tieħu imma taf x'se joħodlok" ('you don't know what you'll get with the PN, but you know what it will take from you'), to which Cutajar had quipped "miegħek tista ssib bomba taħt il-karozza" ('with you, you might find a bomb under the car'). When Cutajar was arraigned this morning during a district sitting before magistrate Kevan Azzopardi, he had immediately admitted guilt. Cutajar's defence lawyer, Ishmael Psaila, told the court that the defendant was sorry for his comment and had also apologised to the min- ister privately. Cutajar apologised once again in court today, saying that he never had any intention of threat- ening anyone. Lawyer Maurice Meli, representing the minis- ter together with lawyer Stefano Filletti, told the court that although the man's behaviour was not acceptable, that minister was not after his pound of flesh. Minister Silvio Schembri, who was follow- ing proceedings via video conference, also addressed the court, saying that although the comment had been made in the context of an electoral campaign, there was a limit to what is tolerable. Finding Cutajar guilty the magistrate, after taking into account the early guilty plea, the multiple apologies and the defendant's evident remorse, fined him €50. Economy minister Silvio Schembri (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday) A magistrate has dismissed a li- bel claim brought by one-time Occupy Justice and Repubblika activist Rachel Williams against former Labour minister Chris Cardona, over a denigratory tweet Williams claimed was de- famatory. In the end, Williams failed to provide sufficient evidence to support her case that Cardona's comment that she had been fired from her Bank of Valletta job, had affected her employment opportunities thereafter. It turned out that she had left her job as BOV business relea- tionship manager in December 2016, well three years and a half before Cardona's tweet, a reac- tion he made to a series of Wil- liams's tweets against him. Williams alleged that Cardo- na's tweet - "Didn't you get a life after being fired from BOV?" – was defamatory and intended to harm her reputation. But as noted by Magistrate Ra- chel Montebello, the significant time gap made it unlikely for the tweet to have influenced Wil- liams' job prospects. It turns out that after leaving BOV in 2016, Williams was lat- er employed by the Nationalist Party in March 2017 as a sales and advertising executive; then moved on to Union Golden Pay for a year; then was made 'vice president' at Fimbank for vie momnths; opened a cafeteria in 2019, and rejoined Union Gold- en Pay; then after the pandemic in 2020 worked part-time in a restaurant, as operations man- ager with Etiscura Insurance; and then with Malta Shopper from November 2021, a compa- ny owned by former Nationalist MP David Thake. Magistrate Montebello high- lighted the context in which the comment was made, saying Wil- liams had a history of publicly criticising and insulting Cardo- na, challenging him to respond. With her employment history, the court found no indication that Williams' employment his- tory had been in any way affect- ed by Cardona's tweet in 2020. The court also found that Wil- liams, represented by lawyers Andrew Borg Cardona and Eve Borg Costanzi in the proceed- ings, failed to provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the statement had caused her "seri- ous harm" as required at law, or even substantiate her claim that Cardona's Twitter following had contributed to significant repu- tational damage. Occupy Justice activist Rachel Williams (left) and former Labour minister Chris Cardona Activist sued former Labour minister over dismissive tweet claiming it affected her employment opportunities, three years after leaving bank job Accused apologised in court saying he never intends to repeat his mistake