Fenech trial: €150,000 in cash for the murder of Caruana Galizia
Maltese prosecutors presented evidence of a handshake, cash and a coded message. Fenech denies ordering the murder of the journalist in 2017.
Trial for the murder of Caruana Galizia: €150,000 to the hitmen
A handshake, €150,000 in cash inside a brown envelope and a coded written message — these are the key pieces of evidence presented by Maltese prosecutors in the trial of businessman Yorgen Fenech, according to gr.euronews.com.
Fenech, 44, is accused of being the mastermind behind the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in October 2017. He denies all charges. The trial began on Wednesday, after years of procedural delays and an attempted escape by the defendant on his yacht in 2019.
The chain of conspiracy
According to the indictment, cited by the newspaper Times of Malta, Fenech assigned someone he knew to find people capable of killing the journalist, initially claiming he was afraid that she was planning to publish revelations about his uncle. The acquaintance came into contact with brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, with whom a fee of €150,000 was agreed upon. The sum was handed over in cash by Fenech, according to a report by the journalism platform Amphora Media of the Daphne Caruana Galizia foundation.
The two brothers devoted the summer of 2017 to planning the attack together with a third accomplice. According to this accomplice, the trio initially examined the possibility of shooting the journalist with sniper rifles, before settling on the use of an explosive device in a car.
The execution and the sentences
On 16 October 2017, the 53-year-old Caruana Galizia was killed near her home in Malta. The perpetrators had placed a bomb under the driver's seat of her Peugeot 108 the previous night and detonated it with a coded message. The Degiorgio brothers were convicted in 2022 to 40 years in prison each, whilst the third accomplice was sentenced in 2021 to 15 years imprisonment.
Political consequences
The murder of the journalist, known also as the "one-man WikiLeaks" for her revelations concerning corruption in senior levels of Malta, provoked a wave of outrage internationally. It led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in January 2020, amid protests over his alleged efforts to protect accomplices. Meanwhile, it brought Malta, the smallest EU member state, to the centre of criticism for shortcomings in the rule of law.
Fenech, who in 2013 had secured a multi-million-euro contract with the Maltese state for the construction of a natural gas power generation unit, was arrested in 2019 on his yacht. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Source: Google News GR — Crime (el)