Daphne Caruana Galizia murder trial puts Malta’s political elite under the spotlight

A lot of people know that Caruana Galizia was Malta’s most prominent investigative journalist and anti-corruption activist. Who is Yorgen Fenech, and what is the prosecution alleging motivated him to commission her murder?

Fenech is 44, and the heir to the Tumas Group, one of Malta’s largest business empires. He was a director, and remains a shareholder, of ElectroGas, the consortium that won the contract to build and run Malta’s new gas power station, a deal underwritten by a state guarantee of more than 400 million euros ($460 million).

He was also, though nobody knew it at the time, the owner of 17 Black, a Dubai company. Leaked documents later showed 17 Black listed as an intended source of payments into two Panama companies opened for Schembri and the then energy minister, Konrad Mizzi.

Fenech, Schembri and Mizzi were charged in 2025 with corruption and money laundering in connection with 17 Black. Those proceedings are ongoing.

The prosecution’s case alleges Fenech was motivated to commission Caruana Galizia’s murder, because she was closing in on details about that alleged corruption. She first named 17 Black in February 2017, and hinted at Fenech’s ownership in the comments beneath the article. Eight days later, the company changed its name. She also received a large leak of ElectroGas material that year.

Fenech and his defense team reject that motive entirely.

But he is not accused of carrying out her assasination by himself. How many people were allegedly involved in her killing?

Five men have already been convicted. Vince Muscat, a convicted hitman who turned state witness, admitted in 2021 to his part in planning the killing, surveilling Caruana Galizia, and acting as a spotter. He got 15 years in prison. Alfred and George Degiorgio, who placed and detonated the bomb, pleaded guilty in 2022 and got 40 years each. Robert Agius and Jamie Vella were sentenced to life in 2025 for supplying the bomb.

Melvin Theuma, the confessed middleman who says he brokered the killing on Fenech’s behalf, received a presidential pardon in exchange for providing evidence.

Fenech is the latest to face trial over the murder, charged with complicity and criminal association. The prosecution has cast him as the man who commissioned and paid for it.

Jurors have been presented with covert recordings of Fenech made by Melvin Theuma, who confessed to acting as the middleman to arrange Caruana Galizia’s killing. What did Theuma’s testimony allegedly reveal?

Theuma gave the jury the full narrative arc of the murder, starting weeks before the 2017 general election was called on May 1 that year. He insisted throughout that Fenech ordered and paid for the killing.

Fenech confirmed under oath that he handed Theuma 450,000 euros ($520,000) after the murder, money that funded the legal defense of Alfred and George Degiorgio. Fenech’s position is that he was being blackmailed.

Theuma broke down in the box describing the murder and apologized to Caruana Galizia’s sons. 

The recordings land hard. Fenech’s voice is on them, and the prosecution says several of his remarks point to his own involvement. It built its closing address around them, with him saying things like: "Our power is the money" and "What am I going to do, tell the judge I killed her?"

Fenech’s defense team is alleging that Keith Schembri was the true mastermind of the killing, not their client. The last line she wrote, in a blog post about Keith Schembri on the day she died was: “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate." Who is he and how credible do you see this allegation?

Schembri was chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat from 2013 until November 2019, which in practice made him one of the most powerful people in the country. He owned Tillgate, one of the two Panamanian companies that listed 17 Black as its target client.

He resigned in November 2019, hours before he was arrested in connection with the murder. He was questioned and released without charge, and now faces separate criminal proceedings over leaks in the investigation.

Fenech conceded under cross-examination that Schembri never told him directly that he had ordered the killing, and that his source for that allegation was Theuma. During his four days of testimony, Schembri denied it flatly.

Schembri’s credibility is not for me to decide. But there are open questions about whether the investigation into him was adequate. His mobile phone was suspiciously missing when he was arrested in 2019 and never recovered, and actions of investigators in this regard raise a lot of questions. Testimony has revealed that he leaked state intelligence secrets regarding the case to the plotters. He was allegedly involved in attempting to secure bail for the hitmen, and also allegedly wrote a note attempting to instruct Fenech how to frame another man for the killing.

Charles Mercieca, one of Fenech’s lawyers, called Schembri "l-id moħbija" — the hidden hand.

The charges against Yorgen Fenech are based on a magisterial inquiry prepared and submitted to Malta’s attorney general. Under the country’s legal system, magisterial inquiries are not made public. Have previously unknown details emerged so far at the trial that provide insights into what the magisterial inquiry found or alleges? 

A great deal, and this is the underrated public-interest function of the trial.

Magisterial inquiries in Malta are not published. Fragments have leaked over the years, and a 2024 court decree restricted what could be discussed publicly. So for six years the country argued about this case on the basis of partial material.

The trial has put the underlying evidence into open court. The Theuma recordings were played folio by folio rather than quoted second-hand, with the transcripts read into the record. Fenech’s own police statements to Superintendent Kurt Zahra, taken over two days in November 2019, were played to jurors. Europol forensic experts gave evidence on the device extractions. Police witnesses set out what was seized, and where.

It is the closest thing Malta has had to a public audit of the investigation, and of the state’s alleged involvement in the murder.

A 2019-2021 independent public inquiry into the circumstances of Caruana Galizia’s murder found no proof that the government ordered the bombing. But it said the state did not do what it could to prevent it. It alleged officials actively campaigned to isolate and dehumanize her, making her a vulnerable target, and that there was a “web of corruption” between top government officials and big business, which Caruana Galizia was working to expose. As someone covering the same issues she did, how do you find protections for journalists in Malta nearly a decade after her murder?

The public inquiry’s recommendations have still not been fully implemented. That remains the most fundamental issue for the media in Malta.

Safety will always be a concern in a country where the government treats journalists as hostile actors. But the larger problem is structural. The government continues to introduce legislation that undermines the work of journalists, activists, citizens, and independent institutions. In the last two years alone, it has restricted the ability of private citizens to request magisterial inquiries, and passed a law granting a legal amnesty to accused tax evaders and money launderers.