Caruana Galizia revealed corruption at the highest echelons in Malta, highlighting opaque connections between the country’s business and political elites.
A handshake, €150,000 in cash, and an encrypted message: Maltese prosecutors detailed their case on Thursday against a tycoon accused of orchestrating the murder of a prominent investigative journalist.
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Yorgen Fenech faces accusations of masterminding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s 2017 assassination, a case that shook Malta and led to the downfall of a former government.
Following his 2019 attempt to flee on his yacht and subsequent procedural delays, Fenech’s trial commenced last Wednesday.
He has rejected all allegations.
According to the indictment cited by Times of Malta, the 44-year-old instructed an associate to locate individuals capable of eliminating the journalist and blogger, initially expressing concern she would expose damaging information about his uncle.
This associate reached out to two brothers, Alfred and George Degiorgio, agreeing on a payment of €150,000, reportedly given in cash by Fenech inside a brown envelope, as reported by Amphora Media, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation’s journalism platform.
The two brothers, sentenced in 2022 to 40 years each, spent the summer of 2017 plotting the journalist’s assassination with an accomplice.
Per the accomplice, who received a 15-year sentence in 2021, their initial plan was to assassinate the journalist at her residence using sniper rifles, before ultimately deciding on a car bomb.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53 years old, a married mother of three boys, was murdered on 16 October 2017 near her home.
The killing was executed by detonating an explosive device concealed the night before beneath the driver’s seat of her Peugeot 108 via a coded text message.
Yorgen Fenech, who secured a multimillion-euro contract from the Maltese government in 2013 to build a gas-powered energy plant, was arrested in 2019 on his yacht as he attempted to leave Malta.
Caruana Galizia uncovered corruption among the nation’s most influential figures, exposing unclear ties between Malta’s business circles and political leaders.
The killing of the well-known journalist and blogger, often called a “one-woman WikiLeaks,” provoked global outcry and focused attention on Malta, the EU’s smallest country, for its alleged shortcomings in upholding the rule of law.
This tragedy also triggered the resignation of the then-prime minister Joseph Muscat in January 2020 after widespread public fury and protests over perceived attempts to shield allies from scrutiny.
The trial is anticipated to continue for several weeks.
Additional sources • AFP