Hitmen in Malta took $220,000 to murder journalist, jury hears

VALLETTA – A handshake, €150,000 (S$220,000) in cash and a coded text: Maltese prosecutors on July 2 set out their case against a tycoon accused of ordering the murder of a prominent investigative journalist.

Yorgen Fenech is accused of masterminding the 2017 murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia in a case that shook the island nation and brought down a previous government.

After the defendant attempted to escape on his yacht in 2019 and many procedural delays, Fenech’s trial finally began on July 1.

He denies the charges.

According to the indictment, cited by the Times of Malta, the 44-year-old tasked an acquaintance with finding people capable of getting rid of the journalist and blogger, initially saying he feared she would publish revelations about his uncle.

This acquaintance contacted two brothers – Alfred and George Degiorgio – agreeing with them on a price of €150,000, which he says he was given by Fenech in cash in a brown envelope, according to an account by Amphora Media, the journalism platform of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation.

The two brothers, who were each sentenced in 2022 to 40 years in prison, spent the summer of 2017 planning the journalist’s assassination, aided by an accomplice.

According to the accomplice, who was sentenced in 2021 to 15 years’ imprisonment, the trio initially intended to shoot the journalist at her home with sniper rifles, before ultimately opting for a car bomb.

The 53-year-old Caruana Galizia – who was married and the mother of three sons – was killed on Oct 16, 2017, near her home.

Police and forensic experts inspecting the wreckage of a car bomb believed to have killed Caruana Galizia close to her home in Bidnija, Malta, in 2017. PHOTO: AFP

The killers used a coded text message to detonate the explosive device hidden the previous night under the driver’s seat of her Peugeot 108.

Yorgen Fenech – who in 2013 won a multi-million-euro contract with the Maltese state for the construction of a gas-fired power plant – was arrested in 2019 aboard his yacht as he tried to leave Malta.

Caruana Galizia had exposed corruption at the highest level in the country, shining a spotlight on murky links between Malta’s business and political elites.

The death of the popular journalist and blogger described as a “one-woman WikiLeaks” sparked outrage worldwide and put Malta, the European Union’s smallest member state, in the spotlight over its apparent rule-of-law failings.

Her killing also led to the resignation of then Premier Joseph Muscat in January 2020 after widespread anger and mass protests against his perceived efforts to protect friends and allies from the investigation.

The trial is expected to last several weeks. AFP

Matthew Caruana Galizia (left) and Paul Caruana Galizia, Caruana Galizia’s sons, attending a vigil outside the Maltese High Commission in London in 2018, six months after their mother was killed. PHOTO: AFP