Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating suspected corruption involving businessman Yorgen Fenech and senior Maltese government officials before she was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. Her son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, told the court this in his testimony.
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Fenech, who is on trial in connection with the case, has denied ordering or financing the journalist’s murder.
Matthew Caruana Galizia, a software engineer and member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into the Panama Papers, said he had helped his mother examine confidential documents. According to him, the materials linked Malta to offshore companies and the Electrogas energy project, and he described their contents as shocking.
“It was as though a gate had opened and I could see straight into hell,” he told the jury, referring to thousands of leaked emails from Electrogas, a company in which Yorgen Fenech held an ownership stake.
According to Matthew’s testimony, documents from the Panama Papers and information obtained from the journalist’s sources showed that then-Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi and the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, had set up offshore companies immediately after taking office. He said that an accounting firm was helping them open bank accounts for these companies.
At the time of her murder, Daphne Caruana Galizia was working on a new data leak involving thousands of Electrogas emails. Matthew said that after arranging the documents into a searchable format, he noticed that Yorgen Fenech’s name appeared repeatedly in the company’s communications.
The prosecution asked him what his mother had told him about the tendering process for the energy project. He replied that the journalist considered it corrupt. The judge intervened to clarify that this was Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assessment and not a fact proven in court.
Matthew also testified that his mother had considered forming an international group of journalists to investigate the Electrogas documents, following a model similar to the Panama Papers collaboration. He said that she had contacted The Guardian about launching the project, but Daphne was killed only a few months later.
The murdered journalist’s son.
After the assassination, Matthew established the Daphne Project, an international media collaboration that included The Guardian and Reuters. The project aimed to continue the Electrogas investigations and help identify those responsible for the murder.
According to his testimony, investigations conducted by the project uncovered evidence suggesting that Fenech had planned bribe payments to secure the power plant concession. Fenech, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri have repeatedly denied the corruption allegations. During the hearing, the judge asked that the testimony be limited to facts supported by documents filed with the court.
In the concluding part of his testimony, Matthew returned to the moments surrounding the attack. He said he was working at home when he heard the explosion and immediately headed to the scene.
“I saw the road in flames, pieces of metal and body parts. The car horn would not stop. Inside, I saw a shadow and realized it was my mother,” he recounted.
After his mother’s murder, he said he gave up his career to devote himself to the pursuit of justice.
“I left my job and returned to Malta. It was our mission to ensure that those responsible were held accountable. This came at a great personal cost,” Matthew said.
The trial of Yorgen Fenech, who is accused of complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, is continuing. Fenech maintains that he is innocent.
