Maltese prosecutors charge businessman in reporter’s killing :: WRAL.com

https://ift.tt/2OYQ0Xd Maltese prosecutors charge businessman in reporter’s killing Posted 35 minutes ago Updated 33 minutes ago VALLETTA, MALTA — Maltese prosecutors on Saturday charged a prominent local businessman as being an accomplice to the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in a 2017 car bombing on Malta. Yorgen Fenech, a Maltese hotelier and former director of the Maltese power company, was also charged in the evening courtroom hearing with being an accomplice to causing the explosion that killed the 53-year-old reporter as she drove near her home. Magistrate Audrey Demicoli asked Fenech to enter pleas. He replied that he was pleading innocent, and he was remanded in custody. Ten days earlier, Malta police stopped Fenech as he was sailing away from Malta on his yacht. The reporter’s family has alleged that Fenech has ties to close associates of the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, including his recently resigned chief of staff. It wasn’t immediately clear if Muscat might resign amid increasing calls by citizens on the island, including Caruana Galizia’s family, for him to step down. Muscat, in power since 2013, has said he will speak after the investigative case is complete. “What we now expect is the prime minister to leave office and to leave Parliament,” Corinne Vella, one of the slain reporter’s sisters, told The Malta Independent after the arraignment of Fenech. Vella also called for Muscat as well as his former chief of staff, Keith Schembri. to be “properly investigated” for their “possible involvement in Daphne's assassination." Schembri quit his government post a few days earlier. He had been taken into custody for questioning but later released. Police said there weren’t grounds to hold him. Two of Muscat’s ministers also have stepped down, including one who was questioned. The two, along with Schembri, have said they are innocent of wrongdoing. Caruana Galizia wrote shortly before her death that corruption was everywhere in political and business circles in the tiny EU nation. An alleged go-between in the bombing has received immunity from prosecution for alerting authorities to Fenech’s purported involvement. Three men have been in jail as the alleged bombers, but no trial date for them has been set. Fenech’s name appeared in the leak of the millions of documents, known as the Panama Papers, three years ago. Caruana Galizia had alleged in her blog eight months before her death that a company called 17 Black Ltd. that was listed in the documents was connected to Maltese politicians. She never discovered who owned the company. But her reporting was continued by the Daphne Project, determined to root out wrongdoing in Malta, which is a financial haven for many business figures from abroad. The project reported last year that Malta’s anti-laundering watchdog had identified Fenech as 17 Black’s owner. The Daphne Project followed a paper trail to two Panama companies in the names of two people close to Muscat -- Schembri and a former energy minister -- that stood to receive payments from 17 Black for unspecified services. There is no evidence that the payments went forward.