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maltatoday WEDNESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2017 News 5 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 For- mer energy minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief-of-staff Keith Schembri had been mentioned in Pan- ama Papers after they opened offshore companies in the Central American state soon after the 2013 election. MaltaToday was informed that Vella is likely to emu- late what magistrate Aaron Bugeja did earlier this year at the height of the election cam- paign. Bugeja was investigating the accusations that the Prime Minister's wife owned Egrant, a Panama company, when he received a fresh set of allega- tions concerning kickbacks paid to Schembri over the cash for passport scheme. Both alle- gations have been vehemently denied. Bugeja had said the kickback allegations did not fall within the remit of the Egrant inves- tigation and passed these on to another magistrate. Both in- quiries are still pending. The BKA paid over €5 million for the Panama Papers infor- mation in a bid to investigate possible tax evasion by Ger- man citizens. Sueddeutsche Zeitung re- vealed last Sunday that the da- ta concerning Malta was being passed on by the BKA. In an immediate reaction to the news, the Nationalist Party called on the Maltese government to appoint an in- dependent inquiry to handle the cache of Panama Papers data. The party said the data should be sealed and investi- gated through an independent inquiry. "As we stated many times be- fore, the PN has no trust in the Commissioner of Police and so insists that an inquiry is led by people who have everybody's trust, three retired judges, whose appointment is carried out in agreement with the Op- position under the Inquiries Act," the PN said. There has been no reaction so far from the government to the news and the PN's request. Panama Papers was a data leak from the firm Mossack Fonseca to German newspa- per Sueddeutsche Zeitung in 2016. It included emails, finan- cial spreadsheets, passports, and corporate records relat- ing to the ownership of bank accounts and companies in 21 offshore jurisdictions and cov- ered a 40-year period, through to the end of 2015. In Malta, it was Caruana Galizia who lifted the lid on Mizzi's and Schem- bri's involvement, a full month before Panama Papers started making headlines worldwide. PN insists judges' panel should investigate new evidence PRIME Minister Joseph Muscat's car consumed €2,766 worth of fuel in 2016, which was around 35% less than the €4,155 spent on fuel for his car in 2014. This information emerged through a reply by the Prime Minister to a parliamentary question from Na- tionalist MP Jason Azzopardi. Fuel costs decreased each year for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, with the 2015 bill having been of €3,571, around 20% more than that of 2016. The Prime Minister also said that the total cost of fuel for former Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi's car, during the Nationalist administra- tion from January 2008 till March 2013, was of €26,000. This translates to around €4,950 a year for the five-year period. Muscat had come under fire in 2013 when he chose to keep his per- sonal car, an Alfa Romeo 159, for government business, allowing him to claim over €7,000 a year as an an- nual allowance. The car has since been auctioned off by the Labour Party in aid of the Community Chest Fund, and was replaced by a government vehicle. The Alfa Romeo 159 used by the Prime Minister between 2014 and 2016 Prime Minister's 2016 car fuel bill topped €2,766 Former PM Lawrence Gonzi's car consumed €26,000 worth of fuel over five years YANNICK PACE NATIONALIST MP Beppe Fenech Adami yesterday ac- cused the government of hy- pocrisy when presenting par- liament with new press laws under which precautionary warrants would no longer ap- ply to libel cases, while Econ- omy Minister Chris Cardona had not yet withdrawn a gar- nishee order placed on late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. "What use is it remov- ing precautionary warrants when only a few months ago, a Cabinet minister used one against a journalist," said Fenech Adami. In February, the court of magistrates had issued a garnishee order of €46,000 against Caruana Galizia over a series of stories written by the latter in which she ac- cused Cardona of having vis- ited a brothel while abroad on government business. The MP was speaking in parliament, as the House continued the second read- ing of the media and defa- mation bill, where he said the Opposition could not vote against a law because it contained a number of posi- tive provisions. However, this needed to be analysed within the context of a government which had "declared war" on journalists that chose to op- pose it, insisting its behav- iour was reminiscent of that of governments in Turkey or Russia. "You have a lot of nice words on freedom of expression, and then at the same time, you have an organised system to orchestrate attacks against journalists," he continued. Fenech Adami accused the government of paying indi- viduals from tax-payer mon- ey in order for them to "break journalists". He accused the government of doing everything it could to discredit Caruana Galizia, pointing to MP Glenn Bed- ingfield, who during the last legislature was an aide to the Prime Minister, while run- ning a blog, which Fenech Ad- ami said had published 67 ar- ticles about Caruana Galizia. He stressed that such arti- cles served to discredit the blogger among a large part of the population, and to create an environment where people felt they could comment on how happy they were that she had been killed. "This is what they were fed by Castille." Turning to OPM employee Neville Gafa, who had posted a picture of Caruana Galizia to social media on the eve of her death, Fenech Adami stressed that Gafa was a pub- lic official who should not be allowed to engage in such be- haviour. Finally he accused the gov- ernment of using fake pro- files inf luence public opinion on media comment boards and social media. Speaking ahead of Fenech Adami, Prime Minister Jo- seph Muscat said the pro- posed law was part of the government's broader strat- egy of strengthening the country's democracy. He said that after strengthening the executive branch by follow- ing up on recommendations made by the Auditor General, strengthening the legislative branch by allowing parlia- ment its own autonomy, and relinquishing its control over judicial appointments, it was now aiming to strengthen the fourth pillar of the country's democracy – the media. "When during the last legis- lature, we put forward chang- es to law through which we gave artists the liberty for them to express themselves there was significant criti- cism," he said. He said the government had been tested on a number of occasions and had always act- ed in the interest of the peo- ple's freedom of expression. The Prime Minister ex- pressed his satisfaction at the fact that both sides of the house seemed to be in agree- ment on the majority of the provisions of the bill being debated, adding that the gov- ernment would be willing to discuss a proposal by Nation- alist MP Karol Aquilina to increase the time limit after which relatives of a deceased individual were able to file for libel over defamation of their deceased relative. Caruana Galizia garnishee order not withdrawn, despite proposed changes to law - Fenech Adami