Murder on the Malta Express Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Daphne Caruana Galizia Quotes

  Note

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MURDER ON THE MALTA EXPRESS

  EXECUTION

  MALTA THE BRAVE

  ‘JOHNNY CASH’

  THE ARTFUL DODGER

  A PANAMA HAT AND CAESAR’S WIFE

  THE PASSPORT KING

  BANKING FOR BAKU

  GAMBLING ON PANAMA

  THE MYSTERY PROFESSOR

  THE OPPOSITION LEADER WHO WON’T OPPOSE

  THE MAFIA DENIES ANY WRONGDOING

  ROBBING LIBYA

  SEX, LIES, AND BURNER PHONES

  BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS

  MALTA’S SHAME

  WHO KILLED DAPHNECARUANA GALIZIA?

  ALL CONCERNED DENY ANY WRONGDOING

  THE AUTHORS

  BY THE AUTHORS

  Copyright

  MURDER ON THE

  MALTA EXPRESS

  Who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia?

  CARLO BONINI

  MANUEL DELIA

  JOHN SWEENEY

  SILVERTAIL BOOKS • London

  To

  Daphne

  To

  Peter, Matthew, Andrew, and Paul

  To

  Michael, Rose, Corinne, Mandy, and Helene

  To

  Rose Daphne Caruana Galizia born on 21 December 2018

  The fight against corruption and [against] the decimation of the rule of law must continue.

  There is something else I should say before I go: when people taunt you or criticise you for being ‘negative’ or for failing to go with their flow, for not adopting an attitude of benign tolerance to their excesses, bear in mind always that they, and not you, are the ones who are in the wrong.

  Daphne Caruana Galizia

  Running Commentary

  5 June 2017

  This book has been completed

  thanks to the support of the

  JFJ Investigative Grant Programme of the

  Justice for Journalists Foundation

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The authors wish to thank the Justice for Journalists Foundation for funding and supporting this book.

  Although the three authors have written this work on the life and murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, dozens of journalists from Malta and around the world have unearthed much of the information that has found its way into this publication.

  It is impossible to mention all the journalists who worked and are still working on this case. We are grateful to all of them. There are no silver linings in this story. But there are important lessons for us, and for those who think that they can kill a journalist and get away with it. When a journalist is killed, a dozen, a hundred, a thousand will step in to continue their work.

  It is right that we thank colleagues from the Daphne Project and Forbidden Stories and the journalists working for international news organisations who wrote about this case. But it is also right that we thank the Maltese journalists working the beat who have documented the drama: the court reporters, the newsroom staffers, the investigators and the editors at The Times of Malta, The Malta Independent, Malta Today, Lovin Malta, Newsbook, and The Shift News. We would not have been able to put this story together without constantly referring back to their work.

  The authors are grateful to the international free speech community’s efforts to promote the cause for truth and justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia and want to single out Rebecca Vincent of RSF Reporters Without Borders, Tom Gibson of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Flutura Kusari of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, Sarah Clarke of Article 19, and others from PEN International, the European Federation of Journalists, IFEX, and the International Press Institute.

  Thanks, also, to the editor and staff of BBCNewsnight who produced three films reported by co-author John Sweeney – one on Joseph Mifsud, the mystery professor, and two on the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and its aftermath, including an interview with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

  In Malta, the cause for truth and justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia has been taken up by Occupy Justice, Repubblika, and Il-Kenniesa whose work we salute.

  The sleeve of this book was designed by Faye Paris.

  The authors also acknowledge the kind support of Maria Orzhonikidze, Andrew Borg Cardona, Sharon Spiteri, Valeria Chudarova, Godfrey Leone Ganado, Kurt Scerri, Aarthi Rajaraman, Ellen Trapp, Clémence Dujardin, Jon Wertheim, Stelios Orphanides, Louiselle Vassallo, Alessandra Molinari, Celia Borg Cardona, David Turcan, Johnny Galvin, and Giuliano Foschini.

  Alleghe, Italy

  September 2019

  MURDER ON THE MALTA EXPRESS

  If we are judged by the nature of our enemies, then Daphne Caruana Galizia should be remembered as a hero of our time. Her murder matters, and it is of concern not just to the people of Malta, but to the world. It speaks to the great problem of today, dirty money’s erosion of democracy and the rule of law. Gangsters and their smooth-talking lawyers, fixers, and PR truth-twisters are using crooked microstates to wash their ill-gotten gains from Angola to Azerbaijan so that their money ends up in London, Miami, Rome, or New York. Daphne took them on because she was disgusted at the lies told by her government to enable the money laundering process. Her blog, read by more people than Malta counts as citizens, was a daily whistle-blast, calling out the government and the opposition, the shadowy foreign money men and their cronies for their dodgy deeds. The Panama Papers was just one example of Malta doing precisely nothing to bring to book blatant dishonesty in public office.

  Her assassination presents the sleuth with a series of plot twists akin to an Agatha Christie murder mystery for the 21st century. Malta’s most fearless journalist was driven by a passionate belief in the truth but she also had a sharp tongue and a nose for a story. She was the living embodiment of Gustave Flaubert’s observation that ‘when fighting for truth and justice, it is never a good idea to wear one’s best trousers’. She fought like a tiger and this earned her so many enemies that one inevitably loses count of the people who wished her harm. Living under threat became a fact of life for an investigative journalist on a small island with a new-found reputation as an international luxury locomotive for dirty money.

  Once better known for its history and natural beauty, Malta was the base from which she challenged corruption head on without fear or favour. In a blog post shortly before her death, she wrote:

  There is something else I should say before I go: when people taunt you or criticise you for being ‘negative’ or for failing to go with their flow, for not adopting an attitude of benign tolerance to their excesses, bear in mind always that they, and not you, are the ones who are in the wrong.

  Her reward was death by car bomb.

  Three men have been formally charged with the killing. They deny it. It seems likely that they are merely the executioners since she never wrote about them. And so, the critical question remains unanswered. Who sent them? Who ordered her death?

  Daphne described Malta as a dirty money train hurtling through the night with a cast of dodgy characters on board. Daphne cast herself in the role of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot joined together at the hip. The other characters are:

  the island’s prime minister, branded by some as the Artful Dodger of Europe;

  the woman alleged by Daphne to be the recipient of a million dollar bung who happens to be the prime minister’s wife;

  the leader of the opposition, whose claim to fame is Daphne’s description of him as a money launderer for brothels in London’s Soho;

  the prime
minister’s duo of creepy consiglieri, both named in the Panama Papers;

  the government minister accused by Daphne of skipping a boring conference to visit a brothel;

  the Iranian boss of a money-laundering bank;

  the Maltese EU commissioner who was asked to resign amid a flurry of bribery allegations;

  the suave and super-smooth Swiss lawyer known as The Passport King for selling citizenships to the fabulously wealthy;

  the daughter of a tyrant currently ruling a fabulously corrupt oil-rich nation;

  the billionaire boss with two passions: casinos and gas power stations;

  the globe-trotting professor named as a bit player in the Trump-Russia inquiry;

  sundry gangsters;

  fuel smugglers; and

  other dubious types.

  All concerned deny any wrongdoing.

  A Council of Europe report by Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt in 2019 sets out the failings of the rule of law in Malta. Omtzigt found that the Maltese prime minister hires and fires his police chiefs on a whim. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is now on his fifth commissioner of police in six years. Too many of Malta’s judges are political appointees, reports Omtzigt, a state of affairs ‘fundamentally incompatible with the idea of judicial independence’. And the country has a ‘culture of impunity’, says the man from the Council of Europe.

  The picture that emerges is of monstrous corruption, its greatest enemy slain.

  Daphne’s loss was most brutal for her husband Peter, her three sons, Matthew, Andrew, and Paul, and her close relatives and friends, but it was a huge blow to all decent Maltese people. The outrage echoed around the world.

  In the annual report of the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) in 2017, Daphne’s sons wrote:

  … in countries where there’s no will or capacity to prosecute the corrupt figures they expose, journalists often become the targets themselves. The state’s full force is brought down not on the corrupt, but on the journalists and whistleblowers who bring their corruption to light. When the first Panama Papers reports broke in some countries… journalists working on the Panama Papers were hit with vexatious lawsuits, financial threats, targeted tax investigations, and physical harassment… Some of those journalists are likely to be murdered: since 1992 two-thirds of all murdered journalists were covering politics and corruption. This statistic shows us that a journalist is murdered when institutions fail to investigate corruption, when they fail to prosecute it, and when they fail to deter it in the first place. The murder of journalists betrays institutional failure and extreme levels of corruption.

  The international community of journalists reacted to her death by creating the Daphne Project, a cleverly effective response bringing together reporters from multiple news organisations around the world, pooling resources to continue her investigations.

  This book aspires to be a continuation of the spirit of the Daphne Project. It is written by three journalists, Carlo Bonini, Manuel Delia, and John Sweeney. Bonini is a reporter for Italy’s La Repubblica who specialises in covering organised crime and is one of the 45 journalists on the Daphne Project. Delia is a Maltese blogger who unwittingly found himself trying – as if anyone could – to fill Daphne’s shoes after her assassination. Sweeney was the reporter on BBCNewsnight who took Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to task over Malta’s culture of impunity.

  The reason we have written this book is because the Maltese state seems unwilling to lift stones for fear of what it may find beneath. To take just one example, at the time of writing, the three men accused of her murder have yet to be tried although the evidence against them appears to be overwhelming. The state appears to have ruled out any form of plea bargaining. The former head of Europol has publicly complained about the Maltese state dragging its feet in the investigation. It is almost as if the Maltese powers that be do not want to know who sent the executioners. After all, no one has been ruled out as a suspect. Not even the prime minister.

  This is our attempt to pay tribute to Daphne Caruana Galizia, to keep the light of her journalism burning and to set out why the main suspects have not been held to account. The person or persons who ordered Daphne’s assassination will not enjoy the contents of this book. This is exactly why we urge you to read it.

  Carlo Bonini

  Manuel Delia

  John Sweeney

  EXECUTION

  Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed just as the shadows started to lengthen, a few seconds before 3pm on a warm autumn day. Malta is one of the most densely-populated and built-up countries in the world but Daphne lived with her husband Peter in a country house towards the north of the island: green fields running down to the sea, chequered by stone walls and outcrops of barren rock. The family home lies on the northern slope of a valley, hidden by trees. She did not know it at the time, but she was being watched and had been for some time.

  The three men charged with her murder are George Degiorgio known by his nickname ‘the Chinaman’ (iċ-Ċiniż) and his younger brother Alfred ‘the Bean’ (il-Fulu) and their friend Vincent Muscat. His nickname in Maltese is il-Koħħu which is untranslatable. Vincent Muscat is no relation to prime minister Joseph Muscat. All three are pleading not guilty. They deny any wrongdoing.

  A pre-trial hearing has heard evidence from a police inspector that Daphne had been under surveillance for weeks before her death on Monday 16 October 2017. The three men were allegedly trying to identify a pattern to her movements. Mostly, she stayed indoors working on her blog, Running Commentary, the most widely-read news source on the island, sometimes reaching 400,000 readers in a single day. It was a must-read; a bitter, sometimes vitriolic account of the waves of dirty money crashing over her island nation.

  When she did go out, it was mostly on brief errands. The day before, a Sunday, Daphne and Peter went to lunch in a nearby town, Naxxar. Some time later, they were joined by Matthew, their eldest son, driving the white Peugeot she had rented some months previously. The couple returned home and Matthew took the Peugeot and went to the beach for a swim.

  On the Sunday Daphne bought some saplings for her beloved garden from a street market. Incredibly, photographs of her shopping were taken by a government official and posted on Facebook. The peeping tom who took the snaps was called Neville Gafà. It is hard to imagine why anyone would do that. A middle-aged woman and her husband buying plants at a market: why would anyone want to see that?

  This seemingly trivial move was part of a concerted campaign of harassment against Daphne. She often published photos taken by her readers, of public figures in a semi-public context: a magistrate partying with politicians whose libel complaints she was deciding, a disgraced judge sentenced to prison for corruption having a business meeting in a restaurant, a government minister having lunch with a lawyer sacked from the police force or the same minister on a pub crawl during office hours in an advanced stage of inebriation.

  Her enemies considered her photos an invasion of privacy and in a campaign codenamed ‘Taste your own medicine’ they sought to retaliate, encouraging anyone who saw Daphne out in the street to take her photograph.

  Neville Gafà had reason to dislike Daphne, but more of that in the chapter A Panama Hat and Caesar’s Wife.

  For Daphne, the harassment was worth putting up with. She loved her garden, the place where she sought respite from the death threats and the libel suits.

  The court cases had been piling up. At the time of her death, she was facing 42 civil libel actions and 5 cases of criminal defamation, most from figures within the ruling Labour Party (PL) led by prime minister Joseph Muscat. Earlier that year, Daphne had published a story on her blog claiming that Minister for the Economy Chris Cardona had been spotted in a brothel in Germany during an official business trip. Cardona denied the claim and sued for libel. In the process, he obtained a garnishee order freezing her bank accounts. Daphne countered by requesting the court to order Cardona’s mobile phone service provider to produce his phone data. Th
ese, she argued, would pinpoint his exact location and establish whether he had really been sleeping peacefully in his hotel, as he claimed, or in a brothel called the FKK Acapulco several kilometres away. The service provider complied with the court order but the data was not made public because Cardona repeatedly failed to turn up in court to press his suit even after she had been murdered. In Malta, libel suits can be pursued after death. Eventually, in 2018, the court threw out the case because of Cardona’s failure to attend court. Cardona is still, at the time of writing, the economy minister.

  More threats of libel action came from British law firm Mishcon de Reya on behalf of Henley & Partners, a Jersey-registered company which likes to nestle up to microstates such as Malta and Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean and cut a deal with their governments to sell passports to high-value bidders. These buyers tend to be publicity-shy oligarchs or autocratic multimillionaires from Russia, China, Africa, or the Middle East who want a second passport without too many questions asked.

  After starting in the Caribbean, Henley & Partners moved to Malta and procured a willing partner in Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party when it came to power in 2013. The beauty of a Maltese passport is that it provides free movement within the European Union and easy passage to the United States. Malta charges around €650,000 for a passport but, with the additional requirements, the cost is likely to get close to €1 million. Henley & Partners takes a cut before handing the rest to Malta. The sale of Maltese passports has gone from strength to strength in the past few years and is believed to have hit the €2.5 billion mark, boosting the government’s finances, enriching Henley & Partners but also introducing a shed-load of shifty, shadowy scoundrels to the island.

  Daphne, with her long dark hair and dark eyes, had something of the sorceress about her. Her enemies called her ‘The Witch of Bidnija’ after the hamlet where she lived. It was not magic though, but good old-fashioned journalism that led her to obtain a chain of emails between the prime minister, his chief of staff and wheeler-dealer Keith Schembri, and the chairman of Henley & Partners Christian Kälin also known as ‘The Passport King’. In the email chain, the three sanctioned a libel attack on Daphne because she dared to question their activities. Daphne had written an open letter to Kälin in May 2017 in her customary acerbic style: