Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Son Testifies: Mother Was Investigating Corruption Involving Businessman and Senior Maltese Officials

When Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb in October 2017, she was investigating suspected corruption linking businessman Yorgen Fenech to senior Maltese government officials, her son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, told the court.

Yorgen Fenech, who is on trial on charges of complicity in the journalist’s murder, has denied ordering or financing the assassination.

Matthew Caruana Galizia, a software engineer and member of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Panama Papers investigation, said he had worked with his mother to examine confidential documents. According to him, the material revealed Malta’s links to offshore companies and the Electrogas energy project, and its contents were shocking.

“It was as if a gate had opened and I could look straight into hell,” he told the jury, referring to thousands of leaked emails from Electrogas, a company partly owned by Yorgen Fenech.

He testified that the Panama Papers documents, together with information gathered from his mother’s sources, showed that Konrad Mizzi, the energy minister at the time, and Keith Schembri, the prime minister’s chief of staff, had set up offshore companies immediately after taking office. Matthew also said that an accounting firm was helping them open bank accounts for these companies.

In the period leading up to her murder, the journalist was examining another data leak containing thousands of Electrogas electronic communications. According to her son, after he organized the documents so they could be searched, he noticed that Yorgen Fenech’s name repeatedly appeared in the company’s communications.

Prosecutors asked Matthew what his mother had told him about the tendering process for the energy project. He replied that Daphne regarded the process as corrupt. The judge clarified that this was the journalist’s view and not a fact proven before the court.

Daphne Caruana Galizia had planned to assemble an international team of journalists to investigate the Electrogas documents, in an initiative similar to the Panama Papers collaboration. Matthew said he had been in contact with The Guardian about the project, but his mother was killed several months later.

The murdered journalist’s son

Following the assassination, Matthew founded the Daphne Project, an international media collaboration that also included The Guardian and Reuters. Its aim was to continue the investigations into Electrogas and 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 ordered that the testimony be limited to facts supported by documents filed with the court.

In the closing part of his testimony, Matthew recounted that 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 said.

After the murder, he decided to leave his career to focus on seeking 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 on charges of complicity in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia is continuing, while he maintains his innocence.