Top exclusive: Prosecutor set up in business with Joe Gaffarena while prosecuting Gaffarena’s son-in-law for murder

Police inspector Daniel Zammit went into business with Joe Gaffarena, setting up two companies with him, while investigating and prosecuting Gaffarena’s son-in-law, Stephen Caruana, for the murder of his wife’s – Gaffarena’s daughter – lover in Hal Qormi in December 2008.

The two companies are called Geras Care Ltd and St Gabriel Residential Homes Ltd and full details of both, including documents from the Companies Registry, are given in a post uploaded on this website last night. Geras Care Ltd was incorporated in 2014 and St Gabriel Residential Homes Ltd in 2010.

This was done with the full knowledge and approval of the investigating officer’s father, deputy Police Commissioner and later acting Police Commissioner Ray Zammit, who – equally shockingly – is also a shareholder in the same two companies.

His shares and those of his sons Daniel and Roderick, another police inspector, were transferred to Jane Zammit, the deputy commissioner’s wife and Daniel’s mother, in June last year in a belated attempt at concealing the relationship. However, documents pertaining to the transfer of shares are public and can be downloaded from the Malta Financial Services Authority portal against payment.

Inspector Daniel Zammit, who is with the Economic Crimes Unit and not with the CID or Homicide Squad, was detailed to the murder investigation and subsequent prosecution alongside Inspector Chris Pullicino of the CID in December 2008.

Pullicino was pulled off the case shortly afterwards when his superiors received information that Joe Gaffarena had tried to bribe him with a large sum of money. There is no suggestion that Pullicino accepted the bribe, and I have no information as to whether he reported the bribe attempt to his superiors himself.

But with Inspector Pullicino out of the way, Daniel Zammit had full control of the investigation and prosecution for murder of Joe Gaffarena’s son-in-law. This was when he went into business with Gaffarena and incorporated those two companies.

Six and a half years after the murder, the case is still at the compilation of evidence stage and the bill of indictment has not been filed. The acts are currently at the Office of the Attorney-General who has until 2nd July – another week – to revert to the Magistrates Court for the continuation of the inquiry.

Stephen Caruana is out on bail though he has been obliged to sign the police bail-book every day for the last six and a half years and is under a 10pm to 7am curfew.

Meanwhile, Joe Gaffarena has had the house where the murder occurred (it was his property) demolished and a block of flats built instead. This means that no further on-site inquiry is possible and that jurors cannot be taken to the scene of the crime so as to gain a good physical understanding of the space, as is usual.

In the interim, too, Stephen Caruana’s defence counsel – Manuel Mallia – became Police Minister in March 2013. Then in July last year, his father-in-law’s business partner, Ray Zammit – who is also Manuel Mallia’s cousin and chum – was made acting Police Commissioner. Manuel Mallia worked on the defence with Gianella de Marco and with Arthur Azzopardi from his office.

So between July and December last year, the nadir of police/political corruption was reached in this case. Stephen Caruana’s father-in-law Joe Gaffarena owned two companies with the police inspector investigating and prosecuting Caruana and also with the acting Police Commissioner himself.

To compound matters, the corrupt acting Police Commissioner was also the corrupt prosecutor’s father, while Caruana’s defence counsel was the corrupt Minister for the Police, known for his reprehensible attitude towards boundaries and the separation of powers and for his extraordinarily casual relationship with Ray Zammit, which was exposed by the shoot-out involving the minister’s driver.

The case has been concealed from public scrutiny for six and a half years, disappearing completely from public view and from newspaper reports after a court hearing a few days after the murder. This is because the prosecutor – Daniel Zammit – requested that the entire proceedings be held behind closed doors.

This is not the same as a ban on the publication of evidence. With a ban on publication, members of the public and journalists are allowed into the courtroom to listen to what is being said, but publication is not allowed and any such publication is in contempt of court.

When a case is heard behind closed doors, the courtroom is cleared completely except for those who are required to be there, and nobody else is allowed in. Journalists have no means of obtaining the information, whereas with a ban, they can obtain it but not publish it.

It is practically unheard of for the prosecution to request that the entire proceedings in a murder case be heard behind closed doors. Any such request is generally made by the defence counsel to protect the interests of his or her client, and the court refuses for reasons that will be obvious, except for the testimony of particular witnesses only in special-case situations.

The fact that the prosecutor requested ‘closed doors’, and the removal of everyone from the courtroom for the duration of the entire proceedings, should have rung alarm bells with the presiding magistrate, but she acceded to Daniel Zammit’s request immediately. The magistrate was Miriam Hayman, who this government made a judge last month.

Now for the background to the case. I must emphasise that none of my information came from court files, court documents, police files or police documents, or any other privileged records which I am not entitled at law to view or which were obtained by illicit means. I knew these details at the outset.

One of Joe Gaffarena’s daughters, Romina, 35, is married to Stephen Caruana, 35. They lived in a house in the unfortunately named Drama Street in Hal Qormi, which was owned by her father, and where the murder occurred.

In 2008, when she and her husband were 28 and they had four children already, she became involved in a doubly adulterous relationship with Neville Baldacchino, also 28, who lived nearby and who was married with a young son.

The relationship was common knowledge in the area and was even known to Baldacchino’s wife, who had quarrelled with him often about it. Stephen Caruana began to suspect that his wife was letting Baldacchino into the house on nights when he was not there. One night, a week before Christmas 2008, he told her that he was going out with friends for drinks and that he would be back late.

He returned earlier than expected, carrying a shotgun, and surprised his wife with Baldacchino. He shot him three times and killed him. The first two shots were aimed at torturing him; the final shot aimed to kill and did so. I do not know what time Stephen Caruana returned home, but Baldacchino was killed at around 1am.

When the police arrived in the small hours, they found Baldacchino’s corpse on the first-floor bedroom balcony, overlooking the backyard and not the pavement, clothed but barefoot. I have no information as to whether he attempted to hide there when he heard the husband enter the house, or whether he fled there during an altercation with Caruana and his shotgun, in a desperate attempt at escaping by jumping off it. And probably, given the fact that the chief investigator and prosecutor is in bed with his father-in-law Joe Gaffarena, nor do the police.

When the police arrived at the crime scene, they discovered that Mrs Caruana had rung her father Joe Gaffarena already. They were met with a story in which husband and wife colluded: that they had been woken in the night by strange sounds, and that Caruana had risen to patrol the house, discovering an intruder and shooting him in fear and self-defence.

The story was immediately torpedoed when one scene-of-crime officer noticed what were clearly the barefoot corpse’s shoes placed neatly together just inside the front door. Mrs Caruana had let her lover in through the front door at night when her husband was out, but then made him leave his shoes at the door biex ma jhammigx.

That is the sort of detail that you simply cannot script, but it gives spectacular insight into the mind of a woman who is more concerned about the state of her floors than she is about the risks inherent in letting a lover into the house at night when her husband might return at any time (and we haven’t even started on the morality issues).

When the police broke the news of her husband’s death to Mrs Baldacchino, and interviewed her, they realised that she knew about the affair and would testify accordingly. This was the only way that information about the relationship between Joe Gaffarena’s daughter and the murdered man would be included in court testimony and made public. Mrs Caruana, as the spouse of the man in the dock, is not a compellable witness and Stephen Caruana had lied already.

It was at that point that Daniel Zammit asked for the entire case to be heard behind closed doors, and Miriam Hayman met his request. There is, however, nothing at all to suggest that she knew of the collusion between the prosecutor and the prosecuted.

At this stage it is quite obvious that the proceedings against Stephen Caruana are hopelessly vitiated, that everything documented by the prosecuting officer is highly suspect, and that it is not enough to simply remove Daniel Zammit from the case because the whole thing must be completely reviewed from the start. There should also be a massive inquiry – by the Police Commissioner, the Chief Justice, the Attorney-General and the Home Affairs Minister – as to how something so thoroughly shocking and scandalous was allowed to happen.

As we all know now, Daniel Zammit has just left the force. He was boarded out on a police pension of 800 euros a month at the age of 35, while lifting 100kg weights at the Ta’ Qali gym, and moved straight into a 60,000-euro job as a fraud consultant with Enemalta. But he stayed long enough to control the Gaffarena prosecution over six and a half years and control the contents of the file which is now on the Attorney-General’s desk.

Police Inspector Daniel Zammit, who set up in business with Joe Gaffarena while investigating and prosecuting Gaffarena’s son-in-law for murder

Deputy police commissioner Ray Zammit, who knew that his son was investigating and prosecuting Gaffarena’s son-in-law while in business with Gaffarena, because he too held shares in those same companies – and this even while he was acting police commissioner and in charge of the force.

Manuel Mallia, defence counsel to Joe Gaffarena’s son-in-law, later Police Minister

Neville Baldacchino, who was having an affair with Joe Gaffarena’s daughter, and who was murdered by her husband, who shot him three times, killing him.

Michael Gaffarena, 27, a dentist at Mater Dei General Hospital – he represents his father’s shareholding in the companies set up with the police inspector who is prosecuting his brother-in-law for murdering his sister’s lover.

Marco Gaffarena, currently at the centre of a government property scandal – his sister’s husband murdered her lover and then his father set up companies with the murder investigator and with the acting police commissioner.

The house where the murder occurred. Joe Gaffarena has since had it demolished and a block of flats built in its stead.