Ex-Malta Ministers Face Charges for Links to Casino Owner Accused in Journalist Murder

Posted on: January 6, 2025, 03:30h. 

Last updated on: January 6, 2025, 03:30h.

Philip Conneller @casinoorgphilc Read More
Expertise: Gaming Business, Regulation, Tribal Gaming.

Two former high-level Maltese politicians should be charged over their association with 17 Black, a company controlled by casino owner and accused murderer Yorgen Fenech, a criminal inquiry has concluded.

Yorgen Fenech, Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Daphne Caruana Galizia
Yorgen Fenech, left, is accused of orchestrating the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Keith Schembri, center, and Konrad Mizzi, right, are expected to be charged in relation to the case. (Image: Times of Malta/Casino.org)

Magistrate Charmaine Galea presented her recommendation to prosecute Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi to Malta’s Attorney General last week after a lengthy investigation, Malta Today reports.

Until 2019, Schembri was chief aide to former prime minister Joseph Muscat. Mizzi was energy minister and later health minister for the Mediterranean island nation.

Caruana Galizia Car Bomb

At the time of her death, in 2017, anticorruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was pouring over the Panama Papers, a cache of 11.5 million leaked documents detailing financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities.

The papers revealed that Dubai-registered 17 Black planned to make a US$2 million payment to two offshore shell companies owned by Schembri and Mizzi, respectively.

Caruana Galizia never found out that Fenech was behind 17 Black. On October 16, 2017, a bomb exploded in her car, killing her instantly.

Fenech is one of Malta’s richest men. Until his arrest, he was CEO of the Tumas Group, which is one of the nation’s biggest employers. Tumas owns the Qawra Oracle Casino and the Portomaso Casino.

The Middleman

On November 19, 2019, police arrested Melvin Theuma, the so-called “middleman” in the plot to kill Caruana Galizia. Theuma promised to spill the beans in return for a pardon. A day later, Fenech was intercepted by armed forces as he tried to flee Malta on his yacht.

Theuma claimed Fenech was the mastermind behind the plot and had instructed him to arrange for two brothers, George and Alfred Degiorgio, to plant the car bomb.

Prosecutors believe that Fenech had Caruana Galizia killed because he feared she would expose an allegedly corrupt energy contract, worth $500 million, awarded to one of Fenech’s companies, Electrogas, by the Maltese government.

Caruana Galizia had received a cache of 600,000 emails leaked from Electrogas at the beginning of 2017 and was painstakingly working through the data.

Fenech denies masterminding the plot and claims it was Schembri who was pulling the strings.

Separate Charges

Schembri was briefly arrested and questioned in relation to Caruana Galizia’s death but was quickly released. Both Schembri and Mizzi were charged last year with bribery, criminal association, and money laundering connected to a separate matter, the corrupt award of government health contracts.

The Caruana Galizia scandal sparked widespread protests and a political crisis in Malta that brought down Muscat’s government in 2019.

Fenech is awaiting trial.