I said in podcast interviews for my book A Sunny Place for Shady People that accused murder mastermind Yorgen Fenech would never spend another day behind bars after he was released on bail.
When he was arrested in November 2019 while attempting to flee Malta in his yacht, Fenech said, “If I go down, everyone goes down with me.” He knows too much about too many powerful people to take the fall.
I also said that the politicians would remain untouchable and only the bottom feeders — the hitmen and those who supplied the bomb — would be punished.
And so it has come to pass. Malta’s richest businessman was facing two separate charges: complicity in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, and conspiracy in her murder.
On 2 September 2026, a jury voted 8-to-1 to acquit.
As soon as he was arrested, Fenech asked for a pardon in exchange for testifying against others. When that pardon was denied, he changed his story and claimed he was being framed.
Why would an innocent man ask for a presidential pardon not once but three times?
Fenech’s defence team claimed Keith Schembri wanted Daphne Caruana Galizia killed because he was angry that she wrote about his cancer, news he hadn’t yet broken to his family.
The prosecution claimed Daphne was killed for something she was about to publish, not for something she’d already written.
She was investigating the Electrogas power station project and Yorgen Fenech’s secret Dubai company 17 Black — the very same company named as the main source of funds (€5,000 per day) for secret offshore companies opened by Malta’s Economy Minister Konrad Mizzi, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, and a third company whose owner was so sensitive that he or she couldn’t be named over email.
Top Electrogas officials knew there’d been a massive data leak from their servers, and they guessed from the stories she was publishing that someone on the inside had passed sensitive documents to Daphne.
The project was teetering on the brink of insolvency, kept afloat by a secret €360 million ‘bridge loan’ backed by Joseph Muscat’s government until it could secure outside financing.
If the sordid connections between the main architect of the power station project, Yorgen Fenech, and top politicians were exposed then investment would have fled, Fenech would have faced financial ruin, and the Government of Malta would have been on the hook for the bridge loan, plunging the country’s credit rating into peril and possibly bringing down the government.
Revenge for having written about Schembri’s cancer or a desperate attempt to hide massive corruption? Which motive would prompt someone to pay €150,000 for a murder, plus €400,000 in hush money afterwards for the hitmen’s ‘legal fees’?
The 55-day trial of Yorgen Fenech held few surprises, apart from additional grisly details from the murder scene. The facts had already come out during the lengthy compilation of evidence stage and in an independent Public Inquiry.
The prosecution laid out its case with weeks of testimony, including damning secret recordings that middleman-turned-star-witness Melvin Theuma had made of the accused.
Fenech’s defence team portrayed their client as a victim throughout, claiming the poor cocaine-addled businessman had only passed the money to Theuma on behalf of the true mastermind Keith Schembri, who was now trying to frame his former friend with the assistance of police investigators and other officials.
Convicted hitman George Degiorgio testified in Fenech’s favour after years of silence, raising questions over whether he had been paid yet again.
Schembri claimed on the witness stand that Fenech’s lawyers requested a meeting with him two days before he testified. “I met them and they told me help Yorgen,” he said. “I told them how can I help him more than I already have?”
He also claimed that the defence team had offered Fenech’s former business associate Johann Cremona €400,000 to testify in their client’s favour.
Cremona was dragged back to court and grilled in front of Schembri. When asked repeatedly whether he was ever approached by defence lawyers about his testimony, a visibly distressed Cremona would only say, “I can take the blame for everything… I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
The judge threatened him with arrest if he refused to answer. After nearly an hour of pleading refusals and frightened glances at the accused, he finally burst into tears and claimed he’d made it all up. “I’m not well,” he said, weeping in court. “I want to be alone.”
Fenech’s lawyers were previously accused of attempting to bribe a Times of Malta journalist in November 2020 to “neutralize bias” against their client. Both were acquitted on a technicality; the Attorney General cited the wrong provision on the charge sheet. Such procedural mistakes are surprisingly common in Malta, as is the disappearance of inconvenient evidence.
The same names came up again and again in this trial, and the same officials were accused of leaking information to suspects, putting ‘friends of friends’ ahead of duty in the mire of corruption that permeates Malta’s government and society.
I found it surprising that apart from three minor bits of testimony from three insignificant witnesses, the defence rested their entire case on the testimony of Yorgen Fenech. They didn’t call anyone else. Why were they so confident?
And who sent defence lawyer Charles Mercieca photos from inside the hotel where jurors were being sequestered — a location that was supposed to be secret? Did they have an agent inside the hotel, as Daphne’s son Matthew speculated on Facebook?
Fenech’s fellow Electrogas director Paul Apap Bologna is currently facing bribery and corruption charges in connection with the power station project, as are the former Economy Minister Konrad Mizzi, former chief of staff Keith Schembri, the accountants who set up their secret offshore companies Brian Tonna and Karl Cini, and others.
Keith Schembri is being prosecuted for allegedly leaking information about the murder investigation to Fenech — details that Schembri got from official briefings with police investigators and members of Malta’s security services.
And Yorgen Fenech is facing charges in a separate case for allegedly bribing a police inspector from the Economic Crimes Unit who was investigating 17 Black.
Fenech’s defence team successfully prevented anyone from mentioning these other trials in court — as well as the fact that their client had requested a presidential pardon in the murder case — because such inconvenient details might turn the jury against him.
Fenech’s family members reportedly screamed with delight when the verdict was read out in court.
He walked out the door flanked by three lawyers and a cordon of police as protestors shouted “assassin”, “filth” and “trash”. One expressed what was on all our minds when he yelled,” Mafia! Who are you going to buy next?”
Yorgen Fenech scuttled away without saying a word.
His lead lawyer Giannella de Marco did stop to speak to the press. “We are happy that justice has been done,” she said. “The jurors did not believe Melvin Theuma. It was an 8-1 verdict, which means unanimous… don’t you think jurors saw who the real masterminds were?” And then she had the nerve to add, “Justice for Daphne has to go further.”
The government of Malta issued a bland statement claiming that it “always offered all the necessary support and resources for institutions to carry out their work” and that it “remains committed to seeing justice served by its institutions”. One wonders what sort of justice they have in mind. The public inquiry into Daphne’s murder found that the institutions themselves are corrupt.
The verdict was still echoing through the courtroom when Prime Minister Robert Abela dropped out of sight, cancelling a scheduled appearance at the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel on short notice. Abela was formerly a cabinet minister and legal advisor to his predecessor Joseph Muscat, whose government was found responsible for Daphne’s death.
I’m not surprised by this outcome — I saw it coming years ago — but I’m still shocked and disgusted to see it happen.
Jury votes are anonymous, and this was 8-to-1. It isn’t just a convenient result for Yorgen Fenech. How many of those jurors will tell their family they were the lone dissenting voice? When the dust had settled and the Nazis were gone, every Frenchman was with the resistance and no one ever collaborated.
Nine years after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s brutal murder, the same Labour government is still in power and the same politicians and corrupt businessmen remain untouchable. If you read my book A Sunny Place for Shady People you will understand why.
I remembered Daphne’s assassination in 2017 and on a visit to Malta in 2025 was drawn to your book on a bookstore shelf in Victoria, on Gozo (strangely not available anywhere in Malta, even as a new release and about … Malta?!)
This book has gone into one of my most remembered read – your superb writing on this harrowing story, balances a gripping account of ‘worse nightmares come true’ storytelling, with lifelike representation of Malta and its people (my sister lives there, and so much of your book rang true to me). It also fuelled the overarching need to know that the ultimate price Daphne paid, to uncover the truth or organised crime and political corruption of the worst kind, MUST NOT go to waste. Thank you for the introduction that created initial interest in this story and has resulted in a close following of the case, up until it’s truly upsetting closure yesterday. Your words above sum it up – how the perpetrators of some of the most terrible crimes, committed by people in such high powered positions, positions that are supposed to uphold the law and oversee the protection of their societies, are still able to dodge justice and are seemingly ‘untouchable’. Words fail.
I have since read ‘A Death in Malta’, by Daphne’s son Paul (who in my eyes has inherited every honourable gene passed from his mother – in striving to bravely continue her work. How incredibly hard this must be, I cannot comprehend). He tells of a price that no other Maltese journalist before Daphne had dared to pay; putting her name to print, on the columns she wrote independently as a freelance journalist for the two Maltese newspapers – newspapers that were continually threatened by the powers that be, to remove her column (even though her columns were no doubt very much keeping their readership at very healthy levels?)
This alone is the biggest red flag of corruption, that a journalist cannot put their name to a report for fear of consequences. In a country that is in the EU too?
Having followed the case intently, I was close to tears last night after hearing the outcome of the trial. This is appalling on so many levels, it’s not a humanity we should feel proud of belonging, and it’s no way nearer to the justice that Daphne’s family and friends, and the good people of Malta (there are many many) so rightly deserve. It must only be intensifying the turmoil and heartbreak for the Caruana Galizia family, my own heart goes out to them.
I can’t imagine what Daphne’s family must feel. It’s bad enough having to relive that day over and over and over again through nine years of court cases — all while sitting in the same small room as her killers. And now they’re forced to watch the one who ordered it walk free, flanked by the sleaziest lawyers in Malta and surely among the greediest and most amoral. I sincerely hope that people boycott every Tumas-related business and anyone who associates with them. It won’t put a dent in Fenech’s wealth but at least they wouldn’t be adding to it.
We have read your book with initially pleasure (it was quite comical) and later on with horror when you turned towards the story of the murdered journalist. We were planning to buy a house in Malta and let this become our primary residence. After reading your book we decided we didn’t want to live on a corrupt island. We also noticed the corrupt fees notaries charge for their service. When you look closer you see corruption everywhere. No thanks.
Thank to your book we didn’t make the mistake moving there.
And now this… totally expected. But horrible news regardless. Still a bunch of pirates on a rock.
I’m glad you managed to dodge that bullet. I’ve heard horror stories from expats who cashed in their retirement chips or sold their family homes to retire in Malta. Nearly all of them gave up and left after being cheated, screwed over, scammed and taken advantage of. I wasn’t surprised by this Fenech verdict, but it does make me puke in my mouth to see it happening.