Malta Jury Hears: Slain Journalist Was Chasing an Energy Deal's Secrets
Daphne Caruana Galizia's son tells the murder trial of businessman Yorgen Fenech that his mother was digging into a leak from Electrogas when she was killed
By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
A car bomb took Daphne Caruana Galizia's life on a Maltese road in October 2017. Nearly nine years on, a jury in Valletta is being asked to weigh who wanted her silenced, and why.
Her son told the court this week that his mother was investigating a leak from Electrogas, the power company partly owned by businessman Yorgen Fenech, at the time she was killed. Fenech, heir to one of Malta's largest fortunes, is on trial accused of commissioning and paying for the bombing.
Caruana Galizia had built her name — and made enemies — chasing corruption stories that reached into the highest offices of Maltese government. Her death drew condemnation from press-freedom groups across Europe and forced a reckoning in a country of barely half a million people, where the case against powerful men rarely reaches a courtroom at all.
The trial is expected to run for weeks. What the jury hears about Electrogas — a joint venture built to run Malta's new gas-fired power plant — will matter beyond this one case. It goes to the heart of what Caruana Galizia spent her final months trying to expose: how public contracts and private fortunes intertwined on the island.
[This account rests on reporting from a single source, the Guardian; further detail on the Electrogas leak and the prosecution's evidence should be confirmed as the trial proceeds.]
Nothing happens 'over there' anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."