Daphne Caruana Galizia's husband wins two libel cases

Daphne Caruana Galizia's husband and his law firm partner have won two related libel cases they originally instituted against Toni Abela (now judge) when he was editor of the Labour newspaper KullĦadd and against Aaron Farrugia, now a parliamentary secretary. In the first case, the two lawyers - Peter Caruana Galizia and Andrew Borg Cardona - had instituted proceedings over an article in KullĦadd in August 2014 about a company which was given €2.5m in government contracts by the Nationalist government. The article said the two were shareholders in the company and it was claimed that they were paid more than €80,000. Aleander Balzan took over the case as the new editor when Dr Abela became a judge. Magistrate Francesco Depasquale in his judgment said that although the story tried to give the impression that Dr Caruana Galizia and Dr Borg Cardona personally benefited from the contracts, no such evidence had been produced in court. On the other hand, the two lawyers had shown that over a period of six years, their company BCGL Services was only paid just over €5,000 for a nominee shareholding. "It is therefore clear that everything claimed by the writer was absolutely untrue where...