by Carlo Bonini
Muscat wheels in members of his cabinet to applaud at opportune moments as he holds a press conference and gloats. He tears into former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and brands him the ‘most irresponsible politician Malta has ever seen’. He also calls on him to resign from parliament.
Muscat cries on cue. He speaks of the emotional toll the allegations have taken on his family. ‘We kept asking each other whether the truth would ever emerge. That day has come. I can tell my children that neither their mother nor their father is going to jail.’
Adrian Delia does not miss the opportunity to rise to the occasion as leader of the opposition, and acts as if on the instructions of the prime minister. He sacks his predecessor from the shadow cabinet. He calls on Simon Busuttil to resign the whip or face the consequences. Adrian Delia has been looking forward to some sort of resolution. His first 10 months in office have been overshadowed by Daphne, her allegations against him, and now her death. He wants to draw a line under the whole sorry affair. He wants to move on from the Egrant scandal.
He cannot have forgotten Daphne’s words on 27 September 2017. As newly-minted PN leader, Adrian Delia paid a visit to Joseph Muscat at the PL headquarters. The photo op showed two men who should have been at loggerheads but were apparently very pleased with each other. ‘That gurgling sound?’ Daphne’s headline ran. ‘Malta’s future going down the plug-hole.’
Always on point, Daphne also wrote: ‘Delia set the scene for the next five years by drawing a line under Egrant Inc.’ But her death put paid to those plans. Magistrate Aaron Bugeja’s failure to pin down the evidence is too good a second opportunity to miss.
Unfortunately for him and the motley crew of crooks, misfits and gangsters fingered in this book, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.
The point of the Panama companies registered by Mossack Fonseca on their behalf was to hide the evidence, to leave no trail of wrongdoing. And Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad set up a bank to launder money for embezzlers from fabulously corrupt regimes. Ali Sadr was an expert at covering up his tracks, that is, until the FBI caught up with him.
Magistrate Aaron Bugeja decides that the certificates of ownership which indicate that Michelle Muscat is the owner of Egrant must have been forgeries. This appears to have been determined on the basis that the signatory, one Jacqueline Alexander of Mossack Fonseca, could not remember signing the documents or recognise her signature. A poorly-paid secretary who’d been employed by Mossack Fonseca purely to lend her name and signature to more than 10,000 companies could not single one out of the many companies she fronted.
Frame-up, cries the magistrate, not stopping to think how unrealistic his expectations are, in the circumstances, or to give weight to the fact that Alexander was herself under investigation in Panama and would want to keep her troubles to a minimum.
Less importance was given to the fact that Karl Cini, Brian Tonna’s Number Two, asked Mossack Fonseca to explicitly deny that Egrant belonged to Michelle Muscat. Mossack Fonseca refused.
The motley crew have also conveniently ignored the fact that a magisterial inquiry is not a judicial process. The Muscats have not been tried and acquitted. A magistrate has simply ruled there is not enough evidence to support the claim, or even prosecute.
Magistrate Aaron Bugeja is promoted judge nine months later.
And in the meantime, the conlusions of the magisterial inquiry are being used to tar those blowing the whistle. It is open season on Daphne Caruana Galizia, Simon Busuttil, Jonathan Ferris, Maria Efimova …
And Adrian Delia conveniently joins in the tumult and tries to rid himself of a thorn in his side, a predecessor he can never hope to live up to. But he misjudges the strength of feeling with the PN and has to climb down. Simon Busuttil remains a member of the PN.
19 April 2018. #occupyjustice activists gather at the Valletta Police Station waving copies of international press reports claiming Economy Minister Chris Cardona was seen meeting one of the men charged with the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
They demand the police question Chris Cardona. The police do not. The minister provides a voluntary statement denying any wrongdoing and denying being in a Siġġiewi bar at the same time as any of the alleged assassins.
Inspector Keith Arnaud, one of the investigating officers, invites the activists to a meeting. Asked if the police have drawn up a list of suspects from Daphne’s writings, as she must have made many enemies, Inspector Arnuad says the police do not consider Daphne’s journalism a factor in the investigation of her murder.
25 June 2018. Joseph Muscat appoints Magistrate Anthony Vella to the bench of judges, meaning that, as the magistrate leading the inquiry into Daphne’s death, he has to hand over the investigation to another magistrate. The magistrate having been the only public official willing to keep the family updated on the investigation, the family are thrown back into the dark.
8 September 2018. Today is a public holiday in Malta. Victory Day. It marks the anniversary of the ending of the Great Siege of 1565. The country’s leaders usually partake in a sombre ceremony at the Great Siege Memorial in Valletta involving the laying of wreaths. In preparation, city cleaners scrub it clean and remove all flowers, pictures, and mementos laid in memory of Daphne. The ceremony is held, and no soon is it over than the memorial is boarded up ‘for restoration’. It had been restored only eight years earlier.
Today marks the start of a concerted campaign by the government to erase Daphne from memory. Every day activists, relatives, mourners, friends build a memorial and every night the government sends cleaners to clear it up.
Fights occasionally break out.
Justice minister Owen Bonnici confirms that the cleaning is happening on his instructions.
In Leeuwarden-Fryslân on official business, Owen Bonnici tries to justify to his Dutch hosts the removal of protest banners demanding justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia. Leeuwarden officials are unimpressed. They boycott their scheduled attendance at all Valletta Capital of Culture events and withdraw their invitation to the Maltese officials to attend the Leeuwarden Capital of Culture events. Instead, they decide to screen the film Daphne: The Execution as part of the Leeuwarden official programme. The film is the work of co-author Carlo Bonini and others.
Meanwhile, the chairman of Valletta 2018 is none other than former secretary general of the PL, Jason Micallef. He makes his antipathy towards Daphne clear, calls on supporters to remove Daphne memorials or banners and mocks Daphne’s last words by captioning a street party celebration with the words: ‘The situation is desperate. There is [sic] happy people every where you look.’
Daphne’s last words have become haunting. 24 minutes before she died, she ended her last blog post: ‘There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.’
Across the world, writers (including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Neill Gaiman and several others) petition the government to remove Jason Micallef. Their pleas are ignored.
Co-author Manuel Delia files a human rights case against Malta’s government claiming that the government’s repeated and assiduous removal of Daphne’s memorial amounts to a breach of freedom of expression. The case is ongoing.
5 October 2018. The constitutional court rules that the police and the attorney general have breached the fundamental human rights of the Daphne Caruana Galizia family. The case was brought over the deputy police chief’s refusal to step down from the investigating team. The deputy, Silvio Valletta, is also the head of the criminal investigation department (CID) and is married to Justyne Caruana, a minister in Joseph Muscat’s cabinet. Testifying in court, Valletta says the police are not ruling out the possible involvement of a cabinet minister in the murder. ‘We’re ruling out nothing.’ The courts agree with the family that Silvio Valletta has a conflict of interest. Twice.
It is nearly a year since the murder and investigations have failed to produce a motive for the murder or the identity of the person or persons who ordered the killi
ng.
Silvio Valletta stays on as head of the CID. He and his team are still the police officers responsible for investigating allegations of corruption and money-laundering against his wife’s friends and colleagues: Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri, Chris Cardona and Joseph Muscat. Up to the time of writing, no one has been prosecuted.
9 October 2018. Drama in Parliament. The prime minister sees red and accuses Simon Busuttil, sitting across from him on the PN backbenches, of being a fraudster. It is one of the most vicious parliamentary sessions in living memory. The session has to be suspended when a furious prime minister lashes out at Busuttil. When the session resumes, Busuttil tells parliament that Muscat threatened him. ‘I will make you carry the can, and you will not even be able to set foot in Malta again.’ Busuttil says it is his understanding that the prime minister is accusing him of forging the signature on the Egrant Inc certificates of ownership.
18 November 2018. The minister responsible for the police force, Michael Farrugia, gives an interview to the Italian TV news channel Rai Tre. He confirms a story in The Sunday Times of Malta that the masterminds in the assassination have been identified and arrests are expected shortly.
The news spreads around the world. The case appeares to be nearing its conclusion.
Michael Farrugia takes back his statement to Rai Tre.
13 December 2018. It is a public holiday in Malta and a traditional Christmas shopping day. The streets in Valletta are chockful of people and the flickering candles at Daphne’s memorial are dimmed by the gaudy city decorations.
At a café across from the Great Siege Memorial, Clémence Dujardin sits with her son. She is an #occupyjustice activist and the wife of co-author Manuel Delia. She is in Valletta to meet fellow activists to finalise plans for their monthly vigil for Daphne three days later.
Activists lay fresh flowers and candles. She hears shouts and knows it is a common occurrence for activists to be verbally abused. She decides to film the altercation just in case it turns ugly.
Clémence crosses Triq ir-Repubblika, camera in hand. A woman charges at her, shouting abuse and insults. A man attacks Clémence from behind and her phone goes flying and smashes on the ground.
It turned out the two are PL activists from Santa Luċija and the man runs the southern town’s PL club. The police charge them with assault. The couple plead guilty, agree to pay for the broken phone and are slapped with a three-year restraining order and ordered to stay away from Clémence and her husband. The court interprets the incident as an assault on free speech.
Christmas 2018. Tony, the 10-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier that Daphne nursed from the brink of death after he was poisoned in July 2017, dies.
16 January 2019. The Australia-based NGO, Blueprint for Free Speech, gives Maria Efimova its Special Recognition Award. Previous awardees include Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, Raj Mattu, Ari Danikas, Howard Shaw, and Visnja Marilovic. She is in excellent company.
28 March 2019. The European Parliament approves a resolution condemning corruption in Malta and the lack of judicial independence. The resolution attracts the backing of all political shades in the chamber including the PL’s Socialist sister-parties in Europe. The only detractors are, significantly, far-right parties.
The resolution follows several reports and country visits by MEPs including Socialist MEP Ana Gomes, Green MEP Sven Giegold, Conservative MEP Monica Macovei, and left-wing MEP Stelios Kolouglou. They are supported by Maltese PN MEPs David Casa and Roberta Metsola.
The European Parliament calls on other EU institutions and member states ‘to initiate an independent international public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia and the alleged cases of corruption, financial crimes, money laundering, fraud and tax evasion reported by her, which involve Maltese high-ranking current and former public officials’.
7 April 2019. The Times of Malta reports that two PN frontbench members held a private meeting with Yorgen Fenech at his Tumas Group office. PN president Kristy Debono initially denies meeting the owner of 17 Black. She later admits to a meeting two days earlier and says she and Herman Schiavone wanted to ‘ask for a sponsorship for a conference’.
Debono and Schiavone are part of PN leader Adrian Delia’s inner circle. They insisted the meeting was entirely innocent but the fallout is considerable. Six months previously, the PN had called on Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri to resign after fresh revelations that the owner of 17 Black was Yorgen Fenech and 17 Black was a ‘target client’ of Mizzi and Schembri’s Panama companies.
Herman Schiavone ‘suspends himself’ from the PN Parliamentary Group pending an internal investigation. The investigation subsequently clears him and he is reinstated.
8 April 2019. The family of Daphne Caruana Galizia file a judicial protest calling on the Maltese government to order an independent and public inquiry into the assassination. The letter follows months of failed attempts by the family to persuade the government to order a public inquiry run by ‘suitable, independent, and impartial’ members. The family say the inquiry should determine whether:
the fundamental right to life is being safeguarded by the state
Daphne’s murder could have been avoided
the state had taken all the necessary precuations to protect her life
there had been a lack of ‘procedures, processes and administrative structures’
these could be strengthened to protect other journalists at risk.
6 June 2019.The magistrates’ court continues hearing the compilation of evidence against the three men charged with the murder. The Degiorgio brothers’ lawyer William Cuschieri makes an odd request. He asks the magistrate to give his clients permission to meet visiting MEPs Ana Gomes and David Casa. Both have been strongly critical of the Maltese authorities over their failings to enforce the rule of law. The MEPs decline the invitation, saying they have no role to play in a criminal investigation. The court eventually also turns down their request.
26 June 2019. The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe joins the calls for a public and independent inquiry into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. It echoes other calls made by several international free-speech NGOs, including RSF Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN International, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, the International Press Institute, and Article 19.
The Council of Europe’s resolution follows a report by Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt, entrusted to look into the Maltese situation. Investigations of this sort are not everyday occurrences at the Council of Europe. There have only been two, both into murders in Russia. An investigation into the killing of Boris Nemtsov. And an investigation into the killing of Anna Politkovskaya.
The PL’s delegation in the Council of Europe attempts to stop the investigation from occurring. They then attempt to remove Pieter Omtzigt from the job of rapporteur because they perceive him as hostile. Then they attempt to force him to make more than 50 amendments to his draft report to tone down its impact. Then they attempt to persuade the parliamentary assembly to reject his report. They fail. Every time.
One of the authors interviews Pieter Omtzigt, who has a nose for corruption and is nicknamed (in Dutch) ‘The Bloodhound’.
Malta has serious problems with the rule of law. There is, for example, a culture of overstatement. After she was killed, Daphne’s family, her widower, and sons, faced multiple libel suits. These libel actions stifle debate. It’s a small country but it’s really like a town. The problem of enforcing checks and balances is higher. Set against that, the history of being besieged means that they are very good at defending themselves. But Malta and the government of Malta are not synonyms.
The primary problem is the lack of the rule of the law. And then there are a series of secondary problems: very weak financial controls. A banking licence in Malta is enough to move capital anywhere inside the European Union. Crypto-currencies are booming in Malta but they can be used to launder dirty money. They hav
e been selling passports. Visas have been given to all sorts of people, including a good number of Libyans who would not pass elementary security checks. In the past, Malta has been too small to look at. But you can undermine the rule of law from a small or a big jurisdiction.
Omtzigt’s report is damning. His conclusions are set out in a series of recommendations adopted by the Council of Europe. ‘The Assembly notes that these fundamental weaknesses have allowed numerous major scandals to arise and go unchecked in Malta in recent years, including the following.’
He lists eight scandals.
One: The Panama Papers revelations concerning several senior government figures and their associates, which have still not been investigated, other than by a magisterial inquiry primarily into the prime minister and his wife whose full results have not been made public.
Two: The Electrogas affair, in which the energy minister, Dr Konrad Mizzi, supervised a highly irregular procedure whereby a major public contract was awarded to a consortium. The consortium included the Azerbaijani state energy company which also made large profits from a related contract to supply liquid natural gas at a price well above the market rate. Another member of the consortium owned a secret Panama company, 17 Black, that was expected to make large monthly payments to secret Panama companies owned by Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri, chief of staff of the prime minister. 17 Black received large sums of money from an Azerbaijani national and a company owned by a third member of the consortium. Despite being officially informed about the case by the FIAU, the police have taken no action against Dr Mizzi or Mr Schembri.
Three: The Egrant affair, in which, nine months after presenting a report said to exculpate the prime minister, the inquiring magistrate, who had been appointed by the prime minister, was promoted to judge by the prime minister. The assembly calls on the prime minister to make good on his promise to publish the full inquiry report without further delay.