Maltese Businessman Cleared of Complicity in Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia's Murder
A Maltese court has acquitted businessman Yorgen Fenech of complicity in the 2017 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. His family celebrated in court while her relatives wept and called for institutional reform.
A jury in Malta has acquitted businessman Yorgen Fenech, 44, of complicity in the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and of criminal association to commit murder. Fenech had denied both charges throughout the trial.
After eight hours of deliberation, jurors cleared Fenech on both counts by an 8-1 margin, Reuters reported. In the packed courtroom in Valletta, his family reacted with jubilation while Caruana Galizia's relatives wept.
Caruana Galizia, a prominent critic of the Maltese government who exposed corruption networks at home and abroad, was killed by a car bomb in October 2017. At the time, there was speculation that senior establishment figures could have been involved.
Earlier convictions
In 2022, brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio were sentenced to 40 years in prison for carrying out the killing. In 2025, Robert Agius and Jamie Vella were given life sentences for supplying the bomb used in the attack.
The trial heard that Fenech allegedly wanted the journalist killed because she was preparing to publish damaging information about him. One of Malta's wealthiest men, Fenech owned a company that Caruana Galizia had written about shortly before she was killed.
In his defence, Fenech pointed to his former close friend Keith Schembri, ex-chief of staff to then-prime minister Joseph Muscat, who was also a frequent target of Caruana Galizia's reporting. Police testified that Schembri had never been treated as a suspect, and he has denied any involvement. Muscat, never linked to the murder himself, resigned in January 2020 amid the political fallout from the killing.
Caruana Galizia rose to international prominence through investigations into corruption, money laundering and organised crime published on her blog. She played a central role in the 2016 Panama Papers investigation, which exposed offshore financial structures and triggered corruption allegations against senior Maltese officials. Her assassination sparked widespread protests across the country.
In a statement, her family said that nine years on, the institutional failures that allowed her murder remain unaddressed, and that the country owes it to her to ensure no one else faces the same risks.
