Day 17 of the Yorgen Fenech murder trial saw former Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar finally called to testify, after days of being referenced, quoted, and cross-examined about by nearly every witness who has taken the stand this past week.Who is Lawrence Cutajar?Cutajar confirmed he was the man in charge of the force when the Caruana Galizia murder investigation got underway, having taken the top job in August 2016. His time as commissioner became inseparable from the case. He stepped down in January 2020, within days of Robert Abela taking office as prime minister, following sustained criticism of how police had handled major corruption scandals during his tenure. His resignation letter defended his record, citing progress made in what he called one of the country’s biggest-ever cases. He went on to take a government consultancy role worth roughly €31,000 a year, a move that itself proved controversial.“I would like to answer every question”Cutajar opened his testimony by revealing he’s now caught up in a second legal matter of his own: a magisterial inquiry into suspected leaks from the original murder investigation. He told the court he’s being assisted by lawyer Ezekiel Psaila, who has specifically advised him not to answer any questions touching on that ongoing inquiry.However, Cutajar made clear in front of the jury that he wasn’t entirely comfortable following that advice, saying he disagreed with his own lawyer’s caution because he’d genuinely prefer to answer everything put to him: “I don’t quite agree with the advice lawyer Psaila gave me because I would like to answer every question.”Judge Grima stepped in at that point to remind him the choice ultimately isn’t just his to waive, if a question risks incriminating him, he retains the right to decline it regardless of his own instinct to cooperate fully.“My door was always open”Cutajar described a fairly hands-off but informed role from that point on, saying it was routine for briefings to be documented and that both Silvio Valletta and Keith Arnaud, then assistant commissioners, kept him regularly updated as the probe developed. He said Valletta in particular would come to his office directly with updates, framing himself as someone who stayed accessible throughout: “My door was always open to everyone.” The detail carries some weight given that Valletta was later barred from the investigation entirely by the Court of Appeal in 2018, over his marriage to a sitting Cabinet minister.Charges, pardons, and gaps in his memoryOn what the investigation eventually produced, Cutajar confirmed the Degiorgio brothers and Vince Muscat were the ones charged, though he said he’d had limited visibility into the strength of the evidence against them at the time, telling the court his only real involvement was ensuring police wouldn’t move until they had a case solid enough to support an arrest. Pressed on the spring of 2018 specifically, he said he couldn’t reconstruct the exact timeline from memory alone. He’d kept personal notes as commissioner, he explained, but was never handed them back after leaving the post. Investigators searching his office had taken them, and he was testifying without access to them now.He confirmed Muscat’s cooperation began when Muscat went directly to Arnaud offering full disclosure in return for a presidential pardon, a request that, as Cutajar described the process, would normally be handled through a report from the lead investigator rather than a decision made by the commissioner personally.Circling Theuma, and choosing to hold backCutajar gave the jury an account of how Melvin Theuma first came onto investigators’ radar: through intercepted calls and leads pointing to recordings that might exist. That discovery set off internal debate over timing, specifically, whether moving on Theuma too soon might tip investigators’ hand before they had enough to secure real results. According to Cutajar, the group ultimately chose patience over speed.He described a standing forum that brought together Arnaud, Inspector Kurt Zahra, himself, the Malta Security Service, the Attorney General’s office and Europol, meeting every few weeks or whenever a major development warranted it, a rhythm that had been in place since shortly after the murder itself.Theuma’s Money-Laundering InvestigationWith the recordings alone not enough to justify moving on Theuma, Cutajar told the court he made what he called a “vital” call of his own: ordering the police Financial Crime Investigation Department to open a parallel probe into Theuma’s finances. The thinking, as he explained it, was straightforward. Investigators didn’t yet have solid enough grounds tied to the recordings to arrest him, so the financial angle was meant to build a case that could.That side of the investigation was headed by Assistant Commissioner Ian Abdilla, and Cutajar was firm that beyond ordering it into motion, he stayed out of it entirely, saying he had no hand in how it was run and was never briefed on its progress. The logic behind going after Theuma on financial grounds first, he added, was tactical: an arrest on those charges would hand police stronger leverage once they had enough evidence to actually confront him. Theuma was eventually taken in on those grounds in November 2019, alongside several family members and his close friend Edgar Brincat, “il-Ġojja.”On Cutajar and il-Ġojja’s InteractionsThe witness said the relationship began innocuously, with Brincat coming to him over a traffic contravention, and that he’d seen an opening to gather information given Brincat’s closeness to Theuma. Pressed on whether these kinds of informal contacts amounted to something secretive or improper, Cutajar was dismissive, arguing it’s simply how policing works: when someone with useful information is nearby, an investigator engages with them directly rather than going through anyone else. Cutajar then asked whether he was expected to take information to the parish priest instead of the person actually connected to it.The Witness told the court that Brincat first approached him at home over a traffic contravention, insisting he hadn’t been the one driving when the fine was issued, a routine complaint that Cutajar said instantly triggered his “police mind.” With the murder investigation largely stalled at that point, he saw a chance to press Brincat for anything he might know about Theuma, explaining he was already well aware the two were close thanks to years spent working the Qormi area, joking to the court that he even “knew where the devil lived.” Cutajar insisted Brincat never actually revealed anything about what was on Theuma’s recordings, no matter how much he tried to draw it out of him. He said he later met Brincat again, and afterward reported the contact up the chain, to the murder investigators, the inquiring magistrate, the Malta Security Service and Europol, adding that not one of them raised any concern about him having spoken to Brincat in the first place. He couldn’t pin down the exact gap between the meeting and reporting it, though he believed it was a matter of days.OPM Meetings At CastilleCutajar went on to reveal that a separate track of meetings was being held at Castille itself, to keep the Office of the Prime Minister updated on the murder probe. He said that once Silvio Valletta was pulled from the investigation following the 2018 court ruling, he personally stepped in alongside Arnaud, accompanying him to roughly two of these Castille briefings in a supporting role. The people in the room, he told jurors, included then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, his chief of staff Keith Schembri, and the Attorney General.Asked who had actually called these meetings, Cutajar said he couldn’t say for certain, but believed it was likely Arnaud. As for what was actually discussed, he said the two sessions he personally attended centred on the recordings and intercepted communications tied to Melvin Theuma, though he was careful to draw a line around his own knowledge of them: he knew the material existed and that it involved Theuma, but said he’d never actually heard the recordings or intercepts himself and had no idea what they contained.•