Nexia BT managing partner Brian Tonna and three other associates were granted bail on Tuesday by a court hearing criminal charges against them.
Tonna, his fellow Nexia BT partners Karl Cini and Manuel Castagna, and office manager Katrin Bondin Carter face charges of money laundering, forgery and other crimes in relation to inquiries into former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri. They are all pleading not guilty.
The court’s decision to allow them to walk free while proceedings against them continue means that each of the 11 people arrested and charged in the wide-ranging criminal investigation sparked by the Schembri inquiries has now been granted bail.
In her eight-page decree, quoting local and European case law on the right to information during the criminal justice process, also known in technical jargon as “disclosure”, the magistrate noted that although the law referred to “material evidence”, this was not only evidence that the prosecution was planning to present in court as evidence.
The law, she said, was there to ensure a level playing field between the prosecution and the defence and to safeguard the proper procedure during criminal proceedings. The statement given by Martin to the police, she ruled, was “intrinsically linked” to the criminal case so she ordered the police to share the declaration with the defence.