IT expert: ‘I told the magistrate I had nothing to do with Schembri’s phone’
An IT expert yesterday testified that he repeatedly told a magistrate that he had nothing to do with a mobile phone belonging to former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri.
IT expert Keith Cutajar testified that he told Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech that he had nothing to do with Schembri’s phone and that the evidence bag he retrieved for her contained devices belonging to two other people – Zenith Finance directors Lorraine Falzon and Matthew Pace.
The question on whether the phone that was lost while in the court’s possession had been found or not appeared to have been resolved last November, when the magistrate responsible said it was in the court’s exhibit room all along.
But Cutajar’s testimony yesterday thrust that into doubt.
“So that bag you found had nothing to do with Schembri’s phone,” defence lawyer Edward Gatt asked.
“Exactly,” Cutajar replied. “So when you told the magistrate ‘I found it’, we don’t even know that Schembri’s phone was found,” Gatt said. “Exactly,” Cutajar said again.
Cutajar acknowledged having made a “mistake” when he asked officers to allow him into the court’s evidence room without a formal document ordering him to do so by the magistrate. He said he had asked the magistrate for one but was given nothing.
Instead, Cutajar showed officers a minute of a court hearing in which the magistrate ordered him to testify in the case.
Cutajar testified that he repeatedly made it clear that he had nothing to do with Schembri’s phone. Defence lawyer Gatt noted that the court minutes did not make any mention of his protestations.
He told the court that the magistrate ordered him to go look for the missing exhibits after he and her deputy, Anthony Pace, had followed her to her chambers and together looked for the missing exhibits there.
Mr Justice Mark Simiana also heard about an anomaly in documentation related to the phone being presented as evidence in the case.
Another IT expert, Martin Bajada, who was responsible for analysing Schembri’s phone, testified that he handed the device to the court in January 2023. But, according to minutes of the case, the phone was presented to the court six months later, on July 31.
Bajada told the court that he was sure that he had handed over the phone in January and that he had a receipt to prove it.
“I have no control over court minutes,” he said.
Gatt said the anomaly raised questions about where the phone was between January and July.
This is the second phone owned by Schembri to go missing. Another, separate device had vanished in November 2019, just hours before he was arrested in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Schembri was released without charge in that case but faces other charges of bribery and money laundering alongside his father and business associates.
He claims that his rights were breached by the court’s failure to safeguard the second phone in the case against him and wants it struck off as evidence in the case.
The case continues.
Edward Gatt, Mark Vassallo and Shaun Zammit are representing Schembri.