Updated - Adds Commissioner's comments on Isle of MTV incident allegations.

Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit said this evening that police investigations into the meeting last week between the Chief of Staff at the Ministry of Home Affairs and Darryl Luke Borg, the man who was wrongly accused of a hold-up, showed that it was Borg who had contacted the Ministry and not the other way around.

Asked in a Net TV interview about how he felt about claims (made by Shadow Minister Jason Azzopardi) that the Chief of Staff, Silvio Scerri, had used convicted criminal Charles Attard as a go-between to contact Mr Borg, the Commissioner said that police investigations, including phone logs, showed that it was actually Mr Borg who contacted the Ministry of Home Affairs.

He had wanted to speak to the minister, Emanuel Mallia, but since he was abroad, he spoke to Mr Scerri instead. It was Mr Borg who took Mr Attard along with him as a person of trust.

The Commissioner said that when he learnt that Mr Borg had been arraigned by mistake, he was the one who had decided that the case should be investigated by the independent Police Board.

Strictly speaking, the board did not need to summon Mr Borg since its brief was to investigate how the police arraigned somebody else.

But when he contacted the Ministry, Mr Borg alleged that an inspector who was now frequently in the news had spoken to him about what he should tell the board. Therefore the ministry felt that the board should question Mr Borg, the Commissioner said.

ISLE OF MTV ALLEGATIONS

The Police Commissioner also referred to the police investigation after claims that Chief of Staff Silvio Scerri told the police to arrest the security chief at the Isle of MTV concert - John Muscat - after an unaccredited guest was barred from entering the restricted VIP area.

The Commissioner said inquiries would be completed next week. What had resulted, he said, was that Mr Muscat had given different versions of his claim, creating a problem of credibility.