Letters published by the PN yesterday confirmed that Labour leader Joseph Muscat knew about the drugs case revealed recently in secret recordings of deputy leader Toni Abela.

Labour is morally bankrupt and morally corrupt- Simon Busuttil

Until yesterday, Dr Muscat and Dr Abela had both insisted the Labour leader had not been informed about the case in which a “white block” was seen being cut up at a Labour Party club.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said Dr Muscat must now explain why he had not reported the case to the police and why he had not told the truth. He called on Labour to reveal all it knows about the incident.

PN general secretary Paul Borg Olivier accused the two Labour exponents of “lying” while PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil said Labour was “morally bankrupt and morally corrupt”.

Addressing a press conference which Dr Busuttil described as a “turning point” in the campaign, the two party officials showed clips in which Dr Abela and Dr Muscat denied that the Labour leader knew about the case.

Dr Muscat, like deputy leader for parliamentary affairs Louis Grech, had even said he would have acted differently to Dr Abela, who decided not to report the incident to the police.

But the PN published letters addressed to Dr Muscat which show that he was aware of the case about a month after it happened.

The letters were written by the barman who was dismissed from his job at the Labour Party’s club after a “white block” was seen being cut up in the kitchen by other people.

The barman, whose identity is being protected by the PN, tells Dr Muscat in the letter dated 2009 that he knew nothing about the people who were using the white powder and was being treated unfairly by the party.

In another letter sent in 2012, the barman says it was the club president who saw drugs being consumed and took no action. On top of that, the barman claims he was framed.

The PN also published the replies sent by personal assistants of Dr Muscat, confirming that the letters had been received and read.

Dr Muscat replied to the PN’s revelations by claiming that up to last Sunday evening he had been under the impression that the case in question concerned the PL’s Attard band club.

This despite the fact that in an interview with The Times last Saturday Dr Abela said the drugs case took place at another Labour Party club and not Attard.

“Up to last Sunday, I had made it clear that I knew of no drug-related case concerning the Attard band club,” Dr Muscat said.

Dr Muscat claimed he had only made the link between the barman in question and the Abela recording on Sunday evening, when the barman – in an interview on NET TV – said he had done nothing more than “cut up a block of ice”.

“That phrase rang a bell,” he said, since it was “the same phrase this person had used when he came to speak to me.”

Dr Abela, he said, had received “unconfirmed reports” that the barman was implicated in drug use at the PL club in question. But those who had made the reports – “reputable people”, as Dr Muscat termed them – had no evidence of this and were unwilling to testify, the PL leader said.

Speaking during a visit to stalls set up for University’s Gozo week, Dr Muscat confirmed he had received two letters from the man in question, and also acknowledged meeting him a couple of years after the incident.

“He claimed that he was cutting up a block of ice and wanted to be reinstated. I refused,” he said.

The Times challenged Dr Muscat to explain the discrepancy between this “ice block” claim and the barman’s assertion, in his letter to Dr Muscat, that two other people had “scattered some powder” in the club kitchen without his knowledge.

“That was the reaction of a man who had just been fired and was trying to implicate other people,” he said, adding that the reports the PL had received all pointed to the barman having condoned drug trafficking, “but we had no proof”.

Dr Muscat said it was now down to the PN to say which version of events they believed: that implicating the man in drug use, or that he had done nothing other than cut up a block of ice.

“It would have been a story had we reinstated this man after these charges,” Dr Muscat said.