Former John Dalli aide Silvio Zammit on Friday filed a judicial protest against the Attorney General’s discretionary powers.
The protest came a day after a Magistrates’ Court declared that there was sufficient grounds for Mr Zammit to be placed under a bill of indictment for trading in influence and complicity in bribery.
Restaurateur Zammit’s lawyers filed the act against the Attorney General, the Police Commissioner and the Justice Minister, calling upon the latter to effect the necessary changes to the Criminal Code so that the resulting abuse, often unnoticed by the man in the street, might be curbed.
The former aide and canvasser to Mr Dalli stands accused of seeking two bribes, including a €60 million one from a Swedish snus tobacco producer to influence changes to an EU tobacco directive when Mr Dalli was EU Health Commissioner.
A key witness in the compilation of evidence against Mr Zammit, Inge Delfosse, had refused to travel to Malta to testify, fearing that she risked incriminating herself by doing so.
The prosecution’s insistence on having this witness testify, in spite of her persistent refusal, had prompted a constitutional application which resulted in a judgment in June wherein the First Hall, Civil Court had declared a breach of Mr Zammit’s right to a fair hearing, stating that such breach would subsist unless the prosecution obtained Ms Delfosse’s deposition as soon as possible or else declare that it had no further evidence to produce.
Read: John Dalli denies ever having discussed money with Silvio Zammit
Yet, in spite of that pronouncement, the AG and the Police Commissioner had “totally and barefacedly” allowed the situation to drag on, without bringing to an end their evidence stage, thereby aggravating the breach of rights with each passing day.
Such an attitude was “truly worrying and deplorable,” argued Mr Zammit’s lawyers in the judicial protest, adding that such “gross disrespect must certainly be taken as contempt towards the spirit of the judgment given by the highest court in the land".
Under the current legislation, the Attorney General has discretion to decide whether proceedings are to continue before a magistrate’s Court of Criminal Judicature or else before a Court of Criminal Inquiry, also deciding when to bring to an end its evidence stage.
Such discretionary power wielded by the AG was resulting in a “great many cases of abuse” since it was giving rise to a situation where persons committing the same offence, “raced” to conclude a plea bargaining exercise, possibly benefiting from a lesser punishment.
In a large number of cases, proceedings before the Magistrates’ Courts were being stultified by the prosecution refusing to close its evidence stage until certain witnesses testified, although the latter refused to do so pending the conclusion of separate proceedings in their regard.
In the light of this abusive situation, Mr Zammit’s lawyers called upon the Justice Minister to effect the necessary amendments without further delay so that magistrates may be empowered “to declare prosecution evidence closed after a number of sittings wherein the Attorney General brings no evidence”.
This would ensure that persons would no longer be allowed to “rush” into an agreement with the prosecution to gain eligibility to testify against others, while the latter, like Mr Zammit, might face proceedings that were “uselessly prolonged without ever reaching a decision”.
Lawyers Edward Gatt and Kris Busietta signed the protest.