Brother of Malta Developers Association president held for questioning in connection with lawyer’s murder

Published: October 11, 2015 at 10:07am
Robert Chetcuti, brother of Malta Developers Association president Sandro Chetcuti. Both brothers have a history of violence.

Robert Chetcuti, brother of Malta Developers Association president Sandro Chetcuti. Both brothers have a history of violence.

Robert Chetcuti, 40, a bouncer with a history of aggressive and violent behaviour, has been held for questioning by the police in connection with the murder of Carmel Chircop, the lawyer who was shot four times last Thursday as he was in a communal garage near his home, preparing to get into his car at 7.30am.

I have no further information. He has not been charged.

He is a brother to Sandro Chetcuti, president of the Malta Developers Association and “fourth floor” campaign fundraiser and network builder for the Labour Party.

The very same morning Chircop was shot, the police issued a public notice via the press, reporting Robert Chetcuti as missing. With no rational basis for doing so, I immediately took this to mean that the police themselves wanted to find him, and that they were looking for him in connection with the murder, even though they said he had been reported missing three days earlier.

The police don’t usually put out missing notices for men of 40 who are fully compos mentis and who are ‘known to the police’. They generally assume they are off on a bender or with some girl somewhere.

A few hours after the police notice was published, they issued another one, saying that the police Rapid Intervention Unit had “found” Robert Chetcuti in St Julian’s.

Mention has been made in the press of a threat Carmel Chircop received over the telephone two years ago, from a man against whom he had placed a garnishee order. But quite frankly, I think this is a canard. It would be quite a normal psychological reaction (though entirely unacceptable) by somebody who has been surprised and angered by a garnishee order to ring the person responsible in a fury, saying things that they will regret later. But nobody hangs about for two years waiting to kill you about a garnishee order from two years earlier.