Former Health Minister Joseph Cassar said this evening that he was the victim of a frame-up and he called on Parliament to provide him with security because he feared blackmail, with his life and that of his wife as risk. 

Speaking in Parliament, Dr Cassar reacted to comments made by Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon and reports in a section of the media, saying the reports were wrong and aimed solely as diverting public attention from the way how Dr Falzon was implicated in a major scandal which had seen a member of the Gaffarena family make millions of euro. 

Dr Cassar said that the facts about his relationship with Joe Gaffarena were the following:

Mr Gaffarena occasionally sought to speak to him. He would speak from the heart and occasionally wept, complaining, among other things, that the then PN government would not allow him to open an illegal petrol station.

He also spoke about how his family was in dire financial straits.

Dr Cassar said that one day, after his daughter turned 18, he had told Mr Gaffarena that in order to help him out financially, he would buy an 11-year-old Peugeot car from him, for €1,000.

This, Dr Cassar said, was a normal transaction and he had asked Mr Gaffaerna to invoice him. Mr Gaffarena told him that instead of payment, the €1,000 should be handed to the PN as a donation. However he did not want his name to be shown, because of his family. The money was duly handed over the the PN which, Dr Cassar said, issued a receipt to him.

At this stage, Dr Cassar said, he should have had a whiff that this could be Labour manipulation, a frame-up under his nose. But he did not realise.

Dr Cassar said that Mr Gaffarena used to repeatedly warn him about his lack of security, including the absence of security cameras. After some months he unexpectedly found a man at his door, and decided to have the cameras installed. Now it resulted that this too was part of a frame-up.

Dr Cassar insisted that he never bought his house from a patient, as, he said, Dr Falzon had intimated. Nor was Mr Gaffarena involved in his house works. 

Dr Cassar said he never gave anything to Mr Gaffarena in an illicit manner. It was from the Labour government that Gaffarena had received millions.

Dr Cassar asked if, before the 2013 general election, Pl officials had met members of the Gaffarena family.

Was it true that members of the Gaffarena family had been making donations to the Labour Party? 

Did a Labour MP have a link to the Gaffarena family or was involved in a business, such as through a nominee company?

Concluding, Dr Cassar said the PN never allowed itself to be blackmailed and never gave anything illegally to the Gaffarena family. The same could not be said of the present government.

This, Dr Cassar said, had been an attempt to intimidate him and his family. It was an attempt at blackmail, and the government, instead of protecting him, was using the matter to divert attention from its Gaffarena scandal.

Dr Cassar said his own life and that of his wife were being put at risk, and he therefore asked the Speaker for protection.

The Speaker said the House did not have such resources and would refer the matter to the police.

LABOUR REACTION

In a reaction, the Labour Party noted that former minister Joe  Cassar had admitted in parliament that he was handed gifts in the form of a car and a CCTV system for his home. This, it said, constituted a breach of the ministerial code of ethics. 

Now he was making a feeble attempt to claim that this was a frame-up.  

The PL said that instead of being dismissed from the PN, Dr Cassar was being supported by Simon Busuttil , whom it described as 'Mr Double Standards'.

In under three weeks, it said, Dr Busuttil had failed to act against Claudio Grech for having 'lied' before a parliamentary committee, he had reintegrated former minister Giovanna Debono and was now defending Dr Cassar. 

In a reaction, Dr Cassar said Labour was trying to twist words. He said that in his speech in Parliament he had explained that he was never given any gift by Mr Gaffarena.  And he had not made him a millionaire as Dr Muscat and Dr Falzon had done, from taxpayers' money.

"Joseph Muscat knows he is lying, and he is doing so because he is an accomplice in this frame-up with Mr Gaffarena," Dr Cassar said.