Posted: January 6, 2025, 03:30 pm.
Last updated: January 6, 2025, 03:30 pm.
Two former high-level Maltese politicians should be charged over their links to 17 Black, the company controlled by casino owner and accused murderer Yorgen Fenech, a criminal investigation has concluded.
Magistrate Charmaine Galea presented her recommendation for the prosecution of Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi to Malta's Attorney General last week after a lengthy investigation. Malta Today Report.
As of 2019, Schembri was a chief aide to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Mizzi was the Mediterranean island nation's Energy Minister and later Health Minister.
caruana galizia car bomb
At the time of her death, in 2017, anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was discussing the Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million leaked documents detailing financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities .
The papers revealed that 17 Blacks, registered in Dubai, had planned to pay US$2 million to two offshore shell companies owned by Shembri and Mizzi respectively.
Caruana Galizia never knew that Fenech was behind 17 Black. On October 16, 2017, a bomb exploded in his car, killing him instantly.
Fenech is one of the richest men in Malta. Until his arrest, he was the CEO of Tuomas Group, one of the country's largest employers. Tuomas Quara is the owner of Oracle Casino and Portomaso Casino.
middleman
On November 19, 2019, police arrested Melvin Theuma, the alleged “middleman” in the plot to kill Caruana Galizia. Theuma promised to spill the beans in return for forgiveness. A day later, Fenech was stopped by armed forces as he tried to flee Malta on his yacht.
Theuma claimed that Fenech was the mastermind behind the plot and that he had instructed him to arrange for two brothers, George and Alfred Degiorgio, to plant a car bomb.
Prosecutors believe Fenech killed Caruana Galizia because he feared she would reveal an allegedly corrupt $500 million energy contract awarded by the Maltese government to one of Fenech's companies, Electrogas.
Caruana Galizia received a cache of 600,000 emails leaked from Electrogas in early 2017 and was combing through the data.
Fenech denied masterminding the plot and claimed that it was Schembri who was plotting it.
separate charges
Schembri was briefly arrested and interrogated in connection with the death of Caruana Galizia, but was quickly released. Both Schembri and Mizzi were charged last year with bribery, criminal cooperation and, in a separate case, money laundering related to the corrupt award of government health contracts.
The Caruana Galizia scandal sparked widespread protests and political crisis in Malta, leading to the fall of Muscat's government in 2019.
Fenech is awaiting trial.
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