Charlon Gouder at intimate Valletta lunch with notorious cocaine trafficker sentenced to 15+ years in prison in Malta and Italy

This photograph shows Labour Party activist and long-time Super One reporter Charlon Gouder, at lunch last Friday at Frankie Grima’s City Lounge in Valletta with the notorious criminal Meinrad Calleja, who served 15 years in prison in Malta, and an undisclosed period before that in prison in Rome, for large-scale cocaine trafficking. Calleja operated out of South America for some years and was under close surveillance by the British police and Customs & Excise because of his frequent trips to and through Heathrow airport.

After the last general election, Gouder – who recently graduated in law – was moved from the Labour Party’s payroll to the state payroll, with a post as communications coordinator to Parliamentary Secretary Jose Herrera, who answers directly to Economy Minister Chris Cardona. Frankie Grima’s City Lounge is a favourite haunt of Cardona’s.

Gouder is no longer on the official contact list for Herrera’s private secretariat, but the Chinese woman sitting with him and Meinrad Calleja (you can’t see her face) appears to be the same one you can see here in this photograph of a meeting between a Chinese delegation and Jose Herrera’s office, on the subject of maritime cooperation. Herrera visited China a few weeks ago to discuss “maritime cooperation”. The visit was reported in the press, prompting many to ask what Herrera has got to do with maritime cooperation when his portfolio is specified as ‘competitiveness and economic growth’.

But more to the point – what is a prominent Labour Party personage like Charlon Gouder doing, sitting at an intimate lunch table with a notorious criminal and convicted cocaine trafficker?