Overview
- The trial began in Valletta on Wednesday with tycoon Yorgen Fenech denying charges of complicity and criminal association in the 2017 car‑bomb death of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
- Prosecutors say Fenech commissioned a middleman, who as part of a pardon deal confessed to receiving €150,000 to recruit the men who carried out the bombing.
- Three men who detonated the device and two men who supplied the explosives have already been convicted, and Fenech was arrested on a yacht off Malta in 2019 after he tried to leave the island.
- Caruana Galizia's killing prompted mass protests, helped force the 2020 resignation of then‑prime minister Joseph Muscat, and a 2021 inquiry concluded the state should 'shoulder responsibility' for creating an enabling climate.
- The trial is expected to last several weeks, could carry a life sentence if Fenech is convicted, and is being watched as a measure of Malta's response to rule‑of‑law and press‑safety concerns.