Arnaud investigates Arnaud
I nearly fell off my chair when I read that Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar said that Inspector Arnaud had been tasked with finding who was leaking information on the investigation into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, given the possibility that Arnaud was the person leaking the information.
In a normal country a police officer is not tasked with investigating himself.
In a normal country it is protocol and policy that anyone above the rank of inspector is investigated by an officer of a superior rank, and definitely not by himself.
In a normal country, it is protocol and policy that such a matter would be investigated by a unit dedicated to such matters. Arnaud contradicted the commissioner and said that it was in fact the Economics Crime Unit that was tasked with investigating the leaks, which is baffling, since it is the remit of the Internal Affairs Unit not that of the Economic Crimes Unit to investigate such matters.
The remit of the Economic Crimes Unit (together with its parallel unit the Money Laundering Unit) is to investigate the Panama Papers, Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Adrian Hillman, Brian Tonna etc.
The number of people who would have known the full details of the case, including who the suspects were, and any planned actions should not have exceeded three or four persons. Other members of the team would be acting on a “need to know” basis.
In the UK this group of people would be known as the knowledge group. The people within the knowledge group for this case would normally be Arnaud’s immediate superior – Assistant Commissioner Kevin Farrugia , the Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar, Inspector Arnaud himself, and possibly Arnaud’s right-hand man.
Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri should not have been privy to the information, but they were. That’s five or six people in all.
It shouldn’t be hard to figure out who leaked the information.
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