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A jury in Malta on Wednesday acquitted the Maltese businessman accused by prosecutors of being the mastermind behind the 2017 car bomb killing of crusading investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, sparking renewed calls for accountability in the Mediterranean island nation.
Caruana Galizia’s killing shocked Europe, led to protests that toppled a prime minister and exposed a culture of impunity in the European Union’s smallest state.
Yorgen Fenech, a prominent Maltese businessman, was indicted in 2021 on charges of complicity and criminal conspiracy. Prosecutors accused him of being the mastermind of the slaying and of having ordered and paid for it.
He pleaded not guilty and the jury on Wednesday, in an 8-1 vote, found him not guilty on both counts. Fenech was greeted with jeers outside the courtroom and the opposition Nationalist Party organized a demonstration late Wednesday to demand justice.
Fenech was the last of a half-dozen people charged in the plot to be prosecuted.
A woman targeted for her anti-corruption investigations
Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on Oct. 16, 2017, by a car bomb that was detonated while she was driving near her home.
She had written extensively about suspected corruption in political and business circles in Malta, with investigative reports targeting people in then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s inner circle whom she accused of having offshore companies in tax havens disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. She also targeted the opposition and business leaders in Malta. She was called a “one-woman WikiLeaks.”
The former prime minister and his wife, Michelle, denied they had companies in Panama.
At the time of Caruana Galizia’s death, she was facing more than 40 libel suits.
“She knew that the powerful people that she was writing about were closing in on her,” Galizia’s son Paul told “60 Minutes” in 2018. “They were using every possible means to shut her down. She knew that, and that frightened her deeply.”
AP Photo/Jonathan Borg, File 
Her other son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, told “60 Minutes” in 2020 that he believes her gender played a role in how some of her story subjects reacted to her work.
Caruana Galizia’s family had long insisted Muscat’s administration showed little interest in solving her murder.
An independent inquiry into the killing published in 2021 concluded that the Maltese state “has to bear responsibility” for the assassination due to a culture of impunity that emanated from the highest levels of government.
A report published by the inquiry said it didn’t find proof of the government’s direct involvement in Galizia’s murder, but that it created a “favorable climate” for the journalist to be killed.
The case forces a prime minister to resign
Fenech, one of the richest people in Malta, was involved in a consortium that won a controversial contract with the Maltese government to build a power station.
His arrest in 2019, as he was sailing away from Malta on his yacht, sparked a series of mass protests in the country that culminated with Muscat’s resignation.
AP Photo, File 
After Fenech was acquitted of all charges Wednesday, he walked out of the Valletta courtroom to a chaotic scene outside, with hecklers yelling as he walked away. One of his lawyers, Gianella De Marco, expressed satisfaction with the verdict.
“We are happy that justice has prevailed,” she told reporters. She said the outcome showed that the jury didn’t believe a key prosecution witness who was granted a presidential pardon in exchange for his testimony.
Caruana Galizia’s children were at the forefront in demanding accountability and justice over her death. Her sons were in the courtroom when the verdict was read out but left without commenting to reporters.
In a statement later posted to Facebook, the family said the verdict denied Caruana Galizia the “justice she deserves.”
“Nine years after Daphne’s brutal assassination, the institutional failures that enabled her murder remain unaddressed and unreformed. Lasting justice means no person should ever face the same risks again,” the statement said. “Our country failed to protect Daphne. It owes it to her to prevent other lives being lost.”
The opposition Nationalist Party organized a silent march late Wednesday, saying in a statement that it respected the verdict but demanding accountability over who ordered her assassination.
“After years of investigations, inquiries and judicial proceedings, justice has still not reached where it needed to reach – neither for Daphne’s family nor for our country,” the party said in a statement.
The government, for its part, said it had always provided the needed support and resources for the investigation and remained committed to seeing justice through. It noted in a statement that a number of people had already been sentenced to lengthy prison terms over the case.
No cameras were allowed in the courtroom, as is typical in Maltese criminal trials.
A half-dozen other people implicated
In 2022, George Degiorgio and his brother Alfred Degiorgio both pleaded guilty to carrying out the slaying. They were each sentenced to 40 years in prison.
In 2025, two other men were sentenced to life in prison, the maximum penalty possible, after being convicted of complicity in the murder. Jamie Vella and Robert Agius were accused of supplying the bomb that killed Caruana Galizia.
Another man, Vincent Muscat, pleaded guilty in 2021 for his role in the slaying and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
STR/AFP via Getty Images 
A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony.
The slaying, and the culture it exposed, led to calls for reforms of Malta’s judicial and legal systems and greater protection for journalists. Tim Gibson, the deputy advocacy director for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Wednesday that the group would continue to seek justice.
He said Wednesday’s verdict was “heartbreaking for her family, who – almost nine years after her death – are still waiting for justice. We will continue to stand by them, and to seek accountability for all those involved in her murder.”
