No Mitts employees involved in e-mail hacking, chairman says

Mitts, the government IT agency, assured former Labour leader Alfred Sant and MPs that to date none of its employees had hacked their e-mail accounts.

Mitts chairman Claudio Grech replied to Dr Sant's letter which asked whether his e-mail account had been hacked over the past two years, after Malta Today reported that people may have gained unauthorised access to his account.

Although Mr Grech stressed that he could not comment or give information on the ongoing investigations, these were not related to allegations made in the media.

Mr Grech said that as far as he and the rest of the Mitts board of directors knew, no employee was being investigated for unauthorised access or tampering of e-mails belonging to any MP.

Mitts, the Malta Information Technology and Training Services Ltd, is a government-owned company which manages the government's internet network.

Mr Grech explained that at the beginning of September, Mitts had asked the Police Commissioner to investigate a suspected breach of internal policies and procedures by one or more technical members of its staff.

These suspected breaches were not related to unauthorised access, or the tampering with any e-mail accounts, as a section of the media had claimed, he said.

Following the article, which quoted senior Labour officials saying that Mitts employees had targeted three senior politicians in the last two years, Mr Grech had instructed the executive management of Mitts to establish where there had been any reports on this - and they concluded that no report had been filed. The Police Commissioner had confirmed there were no reports or information of unlawful access to the e-mail accounts. He invited Dr Sant to contact the Commissioner for a direct reply to his queries.

In the meantime, former Labour MP Joseph Cuschieri - who recently gave up his parliamentary seat for Labour leader Joseph Muscat - also wrote to Mr Grech, the Police Commissioner and the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the matter.