Austin Gatt withdraws all allegations against Alfred Sant

Communications Minister Austin Gatt has withdrawn all allegations against Opposition MP Alfred Sant, made in the House last October with regard to an investigation into MITTS about an attempted unauthorised access through its server which could have led to the extraction of usernames and passwords of the government information system. Dr Sant has accepted Dr Gatt's statement in full settlement of his breach-of-privilege complaint.

The statement was laid on the table of the House by Mr Speaker Louis Galea who chaired the House Privileges Committee in its meetings on the case.

Last October, Dr Gatt said he knew as an established fact that Dr Sant had all the information about what was happening at MITTS, and had spun a story in Malta Today with the specific aim of misleading police investigations.

From investigations he had carried out after a report in Malta Today on October 1, he had found out that no MP had reported to MITTS any suspicion of hacking of e-mail accounts in the government system. Dr Gatt made his statement after Malta Today quoted Dr Sant as saying that he "confirmed that the alleged hacking of his government e-mail account had been ongoing for two years and ... his request for clarification from MITTS last year had been ignored".

In his statement on Monday, Dr Gatt said he had no other information on the case besides what had transpired before the House Privileges Committee. He referred to the testimony of the Malta Today journalist, Raphael Vassallo, who said that his report had been erroneous and that Dr Sant had never said the words attributed to him.

In view of this, Dr Gatt said he was withdrawing his allegations against Dr Sant in this case and confirming that Dr Sant was not involved in any way in the Malta Today story, so that he had not spun the story and much less sought to mislead the police investigations.

Dr Gatt said he never intended to implicate Dr Sant in totally unfounded allegations, or to cause him any inconvenience.