Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1521430
4 NEWS 4 MATTHEW AGIUS magius@mediatoday.com.mt maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 29 MAY 2024 Joseph Muscat pleads not guilty related charges, freezing order JOSEPH Muscat had his first day in court as a criminal de- fendant on Tuesday, pleading not guilty to corruption-relat- ed charges emanating from the inquiry into the Vitals hospi- tals deal. The disgraced former prime minister was charged, together with 13 other individuals and nine companies with serious offences relating to fraud, con- spiracy and money laundering, in a gruelling 10-hour arraign- ment. The case is a complex one, with at least 78 boxes of evi- dence that were gathered dur- ing Magistrate Gabriella Vel- la's four-year inquiry, which had been initiated by anti-cor- ruption NGO Repubblika. So complex, in fact, that the charges took over an hour to be read out. That was followed by the defendants confirming their particulars to the court deputy registrar and, after that, their pleas. All 14 defend- ants pleaded not guilty. A couple of police witness- es testified about the searches conducted during the inquiry, revealing little in the way of useful information to either side. The bulk of the sitting was taken up by arguments about the multi-million euro freezing orders requested by the Attorney General and a surprise request, under a rare- ly-used article of the criminal code, to prohibit the defend- ants from writing on the inter- net or speaking to the media about the case while it is still ongoing. The defendants' lawyers - what seemed to be all 26 of them, in sequence - asked the prosecution to justify the amounts of money they were requesting to be frozen. The prosecution's legally cor- rect, if slightly mischievous, reply was that the answers the lawyers were seeking were to be found in the 78 boxes of ev- idence, which the defence law- yers had not yet been allowed access to. Equally lengthy were the le- gal arguments about the order prohibiting the parties from discussing the case in public. In the end, the court rejected the request for the order at this stage, unless evidence emerged that any of the defendants were attempting to interfere or influence the proceedings by those means. The magistrate, however, made it clear that the evidence was to only be accessible to the lawyers and the parties, as stat- ed by the law. In anticipation of the argu- ment that publication of the evidence was in the interest of the public, the magistrate said : "the public interest that needs to be protected is the correct administration of jus- tice and not the revelation of the evidence collected during the inquiry." The court pro- hibited the parties or their lawyers from passing on any documents or evidence from the case file. While it did not prohibit the defendants from travelling abroad, the court imposed a €25,000 personal guarantee on every defendant to ensure their attendance for future sittings. In 10-hour arraignment, Joseph Muscat joins 13 other individuals and nine companies in denying serious offences relating to fraud, corruption and money laundering