Chris Cardona’s alibi: his policy officer and a beer

After avoiding the press for days, speaking only in a controlled environment on TVM with Saviour Balzan, and coming across as all-round shifty, the Minister for the Economy and deputy leader of the Labour Party began to feel better after filing his libels suits and his precautionary warrants. And in a brief interview with TimesTalk on the Times of Malta’s portal, he explained in great detail where he was on that Monday night in Germany.

“We got to Essen late in the afternoon and stayed in our hotel. Then we toured the city late at night and had something to eat. When we got back to the hotel, Dr Gerada told me he had forgotten my suit in his hotel room, came back and had a beer in my room. He went back to his room and I went to sleep.”

Do we laugh, or do we cry? His only alibi is his partner in crime, his policy officer Joe Gerada. And crucially, he does not say that they were in the hotel at the time when they are known to have been at the brothel, which is roughly between 7pm and 10pm.

No – they was “touring the city” and “had something to eat”. Yes, they were touring all right, on a half-hour taxi-ride to nearby Velbert. And I know for a fact that they had something to eat because my source saw them helping themselves from the buffet table at the FKK Acapulco and then going to watch some porn before hooking up with a prostitute.

The Minister for the Economy and Labour Party deputy leader, Chris Cardona, with his chief of staff and private business partner, Mario Azzopardi