Malta: Three charged with killing journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

December 6, 2017 By administrator

Prosecutors have charged three men with murder for the car bomb killing of a Maltese journalist. The anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed while driving near her home on October 16.

Prosecutors have charged three men with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Maltese media reported on Tuesday. The 53-year-old journalist died when a bomb tore through her car on October 16 — a killing that shook the EU’s smallest member state and raised Europe-wide concerns about the rule of law in the Mediterranean island country.

Under tight security in Valletta, the suspects, Vince Muscat and brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio — all of whom have criminal records — pleaded not guilty to charges that include the possession of bomb-making material and weapons. Police did not immediately make clear whether they believed that the men had acted under contract to carry out the murder or plotted it on their own.

The court remanded the three accused, arrested along with seven others on Monday morning, in custody. The magistrate upheld a request to freeze their assets as well. Authorities did not immediately make clear the fate of the other seven men held.

Caruana Galizia had written a popular investigative blog that accused some of Malta’s most prominent figures — right up to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, not a relative of the accused Vincent Muscat’s — of graft.

mkg/se (Reuters, dpa, AP)

Malta arrests 10 over slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

December 4, 2017 By administrator

slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia

The military and police have detained 10 suspects over the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Galizia, whose work extensively covered corruption by the ruling elite in Malta, died in a car bomb attack in October.

Authorities in Malta announced on Monday that they had made 10 arrests in connection with the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Galizia, who was known for her dogged pursuit of corrupt politicians, was killed in a car bomb attack on October 16.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, himself a target of Galizia’s pen along with his inner circle, said that the military and police had detained the suspects after a weeks-long investigation.

All of the suspects are Maltese nationals, Muscat said. Investigators now have 48 hours to seek charges against them.

Galizia’s death prompted a series of demonstrations on the island, with many on the island nation criticizing the ruling class for not doing enough to catch her killers.

EU talks scheduled

A delegation of EU lawmakers who visited Malta on a fact-finding mission on Friday announced that the bloc plans to hold talks with the Maltese government on the rule of law.

“The brutal assassination of … Galizia was aimed at instilling fear in everyone, especially those involved in investigating and prosecuting cases of money laundering and corruption,” said the head of the six-person delegation, MEP Ana Gomes.

The 53-year-old journalist ran a popular blog cataloging her investigations called “Running Commentary.” Amongst other scandals, she discovered revelations buried in the Panama Papers that implicated Prime Minister Muscat’s minister of tourism, chief of staff and wife in corruption and fraud.

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/malta-arrests-10-over-slain-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia/a-41639910

Malta’s overdue struggle against corruption, crooks and imbeciles

October 19, 2017 By administrator

Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb on Monday

The murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has refocused attention on corruption and money-laundering scandals in Malta. The island that critics – including her own son – described as a “mafia state.

After the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, EU lawmakers have called on the European Commission to do more to combat money-laundering and corruption in Malta after looking the other way for too long.

Caruana Galizia was thefirst to reveal the Maltese names in the “Panama Papers,” the 11.5 million documents leaked in May 2016 that revealed how wealth was hidden and laundered across the world.

Perhaps most notably, she wrote about offshore shell companies held in Panama and elsewhere by members of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s government – as well as his wife. Many of the accusations in her widely read blog, whose last post was published less than an hour before her death on Monday, were repeated by her son Matthew Caruana Galizia in a Facebook post published on Tuesday.

“It is of little comfort for the prime minister of this country to say that he will ‘not rest’ until the perpetrators are found,” he wrote. “First he filled his office with crooks, then he filled the police with crooks and imbeciles, then he filled the courts with crooks and incompetents. If the institutions were already working, there would be no assassination to investigate – and my brothers and I would still have a mother.”

Read More on:http://www.dw.com/en/maltas-overdue-struggle-against-corruption-crooks-and-imbeciles/a-41018676