A court has awarded Opposition leader Simon Busuttil €3,000 in damages over the contents of a story published two years ago by l-Oriżżont in which it was claimed he had not declared his income from a law firm.

The story which had claimed the sum awarded was €1.2 million in government contracts, had been published on April 4, 2014.

The newspaper had claimed that when Dr Busuttil was still an MEP, he failed to declare any revenue received in 2012 from Europa Research & Consultancy Services Limited, even though he was obliged to do so in his annual declaration of assets.

The newspaper had claimed that the contracts awarded to ECRS had not been awarded on merit, and that half of them had been awarded on a direct order basis. 

In its decision, the court presided by Magistrate Francesco Depasquale noted that the author of the story had drawn his conclusions without carrying out the necessary verifications, both on Dr Busuttil's involvement and any profits he had made from the firm. 

It transpired that the PN leader had a third of the shares in Gansam Holdings, which was a shareholder in ERCS. However, in 2011 Gansam Holdings declared no dividends, meaning Dr Busuttil did not make any profit as the earnings were retained in the company's books.

Consequently, it was not true that Dr Busuttil had failed in his obligation to declare any earning from his company on the European Parliament's annual declaration of assets. Moreover, the complainant had no direct interest in ERCS and so could have never profited directly from any potential earnings. 

The court noted that this information was publicly available, but the story's author had omitted important facts which could have harmed Dr Busuttil's reputation.

It ruled that the story libelous and ordered former l-Oriżżont editor Sandro Mangion to pay €3,000 in damages to Dr Busuttil.