The Attorney General has intentionally weakened her own office through a series of mistakes, inexplicable decisions and alleged cover-ups for corrupt politicians, with Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina arguing that what appears to be incompetence is in fact part of an orchestrated strategy to render the prosecution impotent, claims that have reignited the long-running debate over rule of law, the jury system and respect for prosecutors in Malta’s courts. Speaking in Parliament’s Rule of Law committee and later in a statement that followed a series of acquittals including that of former soldier Lorin Scicluna for the murder of Lassana Cisse and of Yorgen Fenech for complicity in the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the PN shadow minister for justice said Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg has made a mockery of her office by allowing competent lawyers to leave under duress and be replaced by inexperienced graduates, by citing the wrong legal provisions in high-profile bribery cases such as that of lawyers Charles Mercieca and Gianluca Caruana Curran, where Mercieca was able to pole-vault overnight from the AG’s office to the defence team, and by issuing a nolle prosequi in the Pilatus Bank case and then failing to prosecute despite a magisterial inquiry ordering charges.
Aquilina told the House that the deterioration did not begin with Buttigieg but with her predecessor Peter Grech under the Labour governments of Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela, who systematically weakened the country’s institutions after the Panama Papers scandal by assuring police that a raid on Nexia BT servers would be invasive and counterproductive while holders of Panama accounts were allowed to slip away, transforming what had once been an exemplary office valued as authoritative and reliable ahead of EU accession into what critics now call the centrepiece of a web of impunity. Justice Minister Jonathan Attard defended the Attorney General, saying she has his full support and that Opposition attacks and threats of a no-confidence motion place undue pressure on constitutional bodies and restrict their ability to work freely, pointing out that the office now employs 70 lawyers and legal procurators plus 26 administrative staff, up from just a few lawyers previously, and that under Labour a nolle prosequi can now be challenged administratively in court, a right that did not exist under PN governments when the AG’s decision was absolute and frequent.
The Labour Party responded by accusing the PN of coordinating attacks on selective members of the judiciary and on the Attorney General, State Advocate and Police Commissioner through lawsuits, impeachment threats and social media intimidation when they do not support the Opposition’s stance, insisting that it was Abela’s government that strengthened institutions by separating the prosecutorial function from the Attorney General after the Venice Commission recommendations and by increasing resources to meet the complexity of financial crime and corruption cases, with the 2026 EU Rule of Law Report noting 77 prosecutors, 24 specialised in financial crime and 36 corruption cases pending before the courts.
