For obvious reasons, this would never have happened under Commissioner Ray Zammit and Minister Manuel Mallia

Just to refresh your memory – so many scandals, so much confusion – back in June I had broken the story that Police Inspector Daniel Zammit had set up in business with Joe Gaffarena while investigating/prosecuting Gaffarena’s son-in-law for murdering Gaffarena’s daughter’s lover.

The murder took place almost seven years ago, in December 2008, but the compilation of evidence had ground to a halt on spurious grounds and Caruana was never brought to trial.

The murder was, of course, public knowledge. It was reported when it happened and the first hearing in the compilation of evidence stage was also reported. After that, further hearings were held behind closed doors at the request of the prosecution (Daniel Zammit).

Because of this, the general public and journalists did not discover that the murderer was married to Joe Gaffarena’s daughter and that the man he killed was Gaffarena’s daughter’s lover. Through private circumstances, I knew these facts immediately the murder occurred, but they did not seem to me particularly newsworthy until I began to enquire last June why the case had not yet gone to trial after six and a half years.

This then tied in with the separate piece of information – of news value in its own right – that the investigating officer, a corrupt police inspector who had hit the headlines only because he was ‘boarded out’ of the force and then put on the Enemalta payroll as a consultant, owned a company with Joe Gaffarena.

As a contextual side note, Mark Gaffarena – who has been in the news because of his scandalous land deals with the government – is Joe Gaffarena’s son and the murderer’s brother-in-law.