A jury in Malta on Wednesday acquitted the Maltese businessman accused of being the mastermind of the 2017 car bomb killing of crusading investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The killing shocked Europe, led to protests that toppled a prime minister, and exposed a culture of impunity on the Mediterranean island nation, the European Union’s smallest, the AP reports. 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. He pleaded not guilty. The jury found him not guilty on both counts.
Fenech was the last of a half-dozen people charged in the plot to be prosecuted. Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed on Oct. 16, 2017, by a car bomb that was detonated while she was driving near her home. Her investigative reports had targeted 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 circles in Malta. At the time of her death, she was facing more than 40 libel suits.
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.
Fenech 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. 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. A self-confessed middleman, taxi driver Melvin Theuma, was granted a presidential pardon in 2019 in exchange for testimony. During Fenech’s trial, Theuma testified that Fenech had ordered and funded the killing, reports Reuters. He testified that Fenech had also funded the killers’ legal defense.