Xhieda ta’ Matthew Caruana Galizia – 6 ta’ Diċembru 2019
l-Atti tal-Inkjesta datata 19 ta' Novembru 2019, rigward skont it- Termini ta’ Referenza ta’ l-Inkjesta Pubblika dwar l-Assassinju ta’ Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Seduta miżmuma llum il-Gimgha 6 ta’ Diċembru, 2019 fid-9:00am fit-tieni sular, Awla 20, il-Qorti.
Matthew Caruana Galizia on oath solemnly swears:
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I swear.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: So you are aware of the terms of reference of
this inquiry.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: So I would ask you to give your evidence, limit
yourself to the facts as you know them, ok? Leave the opinions to us and otherwise you can go ahead and tell us whatever you know about this case.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Thank you. So, I mean there is opinion in there
because it is an opinion based on my experience of the direction that I think we should take. Now, I am – something that I wouldn’t insert into the statement which I just thought of now, is that before my mother was assassinated, I had lived outside of Malta for many years, I was working on investigations into globalized corruption and it is really what was done to my mother which got me involved in everything that has been going on in Malta. Before this I was a neutral person focused on doing my job in anti-corruption investigations.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Yes, but you must realise that as a witness, as a
witness, according to outlaws of procedure, you cannot give an opinion.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes, yes.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: So you have to limit, limit yourself on . . .
Female voice: I think what the witness will try to do is considering the situation and the circumstances as he knows them, he might make an emphasis which may seem to be his opinion. But in reality it is the circumstances as he knows them.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: All right.
Female voice: I think we can go along that way. Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Yes, we can go along that way. Yes.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Thank you. So I want to start by making it clear
that this is an opening statement rather than a complete collection of evidence. It is however based on evidence which I would like to have the opportunity to give later. I would also like to say that my statement should not be considered closed today. I need time to think about everything that we are discovering and everything that we are going to discover over the next few days and weeks. A little note about how we came to this point. A public inquiry is something that should start automatically and immediately upon the murder of a journalist who is investigation high level corruption. It is not something that the family members of the victim should have to fight for. Otherwise we would accept that if a murdered journalist does not have family members who are prepared to fight for it, or if they have no family at all, there would not be full justice and accomplishes in the murder
would be free to murder again with impunity. This puts more people at risk and changes the character of the country making it malign and toxic to others.
The Minister of Justice has thought all along and he has communicated this to us that the Inquiry is a process of arbitration between our right to justice and the needs of what we see as a cultured political party. In this we believe him to be wrong. This is a process that we really hope will lead the truth and justice for everyone and even the undoing of criminal capture. My family is on the side of the inquiry, on the side of justice. This is not a process of arbitration for us. We expect that the inquiry will make no compromises in this mission and will not entertain any approaches from Government Officials or Agent offers or compromises to be made. To help you in this mission, we need to be able to participate in the inquiry and with participation – full disclosure and access to the final report, access the witness statements and documentary evidence collected, the ability to present list of witnesses on a continued basis, depending on the scope indicated, the ability to present questions to be placed to witnesses of all which witnesses may be recalled and the ability to present documentary evidence. We expect full disclosure by the Government as the Inquiry has means that exceeds my family’s, we expect it to use those means proactively to help it discover if there has been a cover up or evidence destroyed. The Board should draw conclusions from any such occurrence. We
think that this is a chance to change Malta. A chance for us to start behaving like a democracy. But I want to be clear, that within its mandate, the Inquiry cannot provide a complete record reckoning. It can however send our country in the direction of one. We have to decide whether the state who … in our lapse, should be used to improve the lives of citizens or whether it exists only to continue providing a civilian front for the criminal organisation that killed my mother. We were at the same turning point in 2016 when hard evidence on high level corruption was forced into our hands. Our nation decided to maintain the front and as a result my mother was killed, lives were ruined and the country is now in deep crises.
The Inquiry I believe should start by attacking the means of corruption, planning permits, government jobs, Judicial appointments and promotions, Board and Committee appointments, positions of trust, Governments contracts, passport sales, financial services license and entities like Jobs plus with schemes managed by the General Workers Union. A test forwarded at the Inquiry’s recommendations for attacking these means of corruption or sufficient could be that my family as well as the other victims of corruption, blackmail, extortion and organised crime, would feel safe living in Malta. The Inquiry could set a reasonable threshold of what this could mean. What I hope it means is that all the perpetrators will be irrevocably moved from public life and I really have their liberty
taken away from them. The means to achieve this could be the setup of an autonomous Judicial Commission against impunity with full prosecutorial powers or a special tribunal coupled with an independent powerful anti- corruption prosecutor. To reach complete reckoning to force our nation to change its character this tribunal or commission would examine all major corruption cases, targeting the lowliest to the most senior officials including those implicated in the assassination of my mother. It would investigate how Pilatus Bank obtained its license, how Silvio Debono and the University of Malta . . . (persons speaking in the microphone). These are all cases investigated by the mother. How phantom jobs went to people like Sai Mizzi, Brian Tonna and Melvyn Theuma. How Nexia BT continues to operate with impunity when E&S Consultancy Limited had their licence revoked for less serious offences and so on.
The main questions that the Inquiry is expected to answer will, I hope, lead in to conclude that such a Tribunal or Commission is necessary. The first question for the Inquiry to answer is whether there was any wrongful action or omission by or within a . . . that could have facilitated or prevented the assassination. Considering the evidence presented in Court over the past few weeks, the Board should consider the Government’s determined opposition for having this question answered by blocking the Inquiry for over a year as suspicious.
Keith Schembri and Yorgen Fenech confidant and private doctor Adrian Vella confessed during interrogation that he passed on messages from the Prim Minister’s Chief of Staff to Yorgen Fenech after Fenech was arrested on suspicion of murder. Why were Keith Schembri and Vella willing to take such a risk to sabotage the investigation and cover up the murder even as Fenech and Schembri were quickly loosing control of the situation? Melvin Theuma testified on oath after being warned that he would loose his pardon and prosecuted for murder if he perjured himself that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff and his private secretary Sandro Craus arranged for state funds to be effectively embezzled to provide Theuma with a salary whilst he coordinated the murder of my mother with a group of hitmen on behalf of his patron Yorgen Fenech. Schembri and Craus did not do this as an act of charity after finding Theuma begging on the street but because Schembri planned directly with Fenech for Theuma to be rewarded with embezzled funds in exchange for an illicited service that Theuma was to render. It was around this time that Craus publically called for all cases before the Courts of Malta to be suspended so that all their resources could be dedicated to an immediate prosecution and trailed after it resulted my mother being incarcerated to prevent her from continuing to report. Craus’s involvement could be downed wider . . . of two things: his pathological vindictive hatred of my mother and the fact that he is head of in quotes Government
Customer Care which is a disguise for an . . . of patronage trading an influence, vote buying and embezzlement of state funds. In that sense, Craus would have consciously been performing the function assigned to him by the criminal organisation operating in the Office of the Prime Minister, that is to use for, to fund estate funds to criminals for services rendered to the central criminal organisation.
Over the past two years government officials and fanatics who have been radicalised by the government’s propaganda, because there is no distinction between party and government, Joseph Muscat is Prime Minister and also the leader of the Labour Party, have stated and insinuated that I conspired to murder my own mother so that I could blame the government, topple it and seize power for myself. Alternately my family is accused of leaking information from the investigation and genuinely trying to derail it so that no one will find out in quotes the truth which they imply is that it was me who murdered my mother. The lack of progress in the investigation is then blamed on me and my family.
As a result of Theuma’s testimony we now know that it was Schembri himself and another government official Kenneth Camilleri who were leaking information that they obtained because Schembri and possibly also Camilleri were present during briefings that he police and Malta Security Services were inexplicably being ordered to give or were volunteering to the Prime Minister in the presence of Keith Schembri. This is when my family had
identified Schembri to the police as a potential suspect in the first instance. Keith Schembri’s name was on a list of names that we supplied to the police as a list of people and investigations that my mother was working on. Glenn Beddingfield was being paid by the government in that in disguise of a job as a spoke’s man for the Prime Minister to run a propaganda blog. That blog, by the time it was taken off line after its mission to aid in the elimination of my mother had been accomplished was responsible for thousands of state sponsor acts of intimidation and harassment of my mother. We will be entering examples of his posts as part of a dossier that we are currently finalising. This including once in a star article a few months before my mother was assassinated in which Beddingfield, ashored the targets of government propaganda that my mother was quote in her death rows unquote and that quote departure dot dot dot (. . . ) with usher in a era of cleanliness unquote.
My mother only mentioned Yorgen Fenech in passing on her website whereas other individuals like Ignatius Farrugia or followers of Norman Lowell have in the past been motivated to violently attack my mother because she expressed her opinion of them previously, the same cannot be said for Fenech. A reasonable possibility backed up by Theuma’s testimony is that Fenech as motivated by the desire to prevent my mother from publishing an investigation into of his illicit business endeavours. The only one of
those illicit business endeavours that to our knowledge he know my mother was working on, was her investigation into the link between 17 Black which is owned by Fenech, Hearnville which is owned by Konrad Mizzi, Tilgate which is owned by Keith Schembri and Socar which is owned by the Government of Azerbaijan. ElectroGas in her investigations and analysis featured as a front for the criminal network between those individuals. This is how my mother saw ElectoGas and how I see ElectroGas as in the approach that both she and I took to investigating it and the people behind it. The Inquiry should continue to think of it in that way rather than as an actual legittimate company. The first time I heard of 17 Black and Macbridge was in April 2016 when my mother asked me whether I knew anything about them. I replied that I did not which at the time was the truth. ICIJ, where I worked, had not yet obtained the second portion of the Panama Papers leak containing the e mail from Karl Cini of Nexia BT that specifies 17 Black and Macbridge as quote target clients unquote of Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi’s Panama shell companies. Therefore the only way that my mother could have known about those two (2) companies would have been through a source with acess to e mails on Nexia BT’s servers. At the time Nexia BT was being subjected to some form of complaince review or investigation by the FIAU who would have requested that Karl Cini, the money laundering reporting officer, at least
at the time, I am not sure if he still is, disclose e mails relevant to the FIAU’s investigation which had started after the publication of the Panama papers. This evidence, gathered by the FIAU, was shared with then Economic Crimes Unit Superintendent Ian Abdilla, who is known to actively communicate and exchange information with Keith Schembri, and to leak information to journalists that is intended to cause damage to Schembri’s perceived enemies. This is something that I know from my communications with journalists over the past years. It is not supposition.
Whilst Arthur Azzopardi, Vince Muscat’s lawyer, was attempting to lead police to the middleman, officials leaked details to the Times of Malta of Azzopardi’s frozen bank account at Sata Bank as an example. The testimony of Melvyn Theuma and Yorgen Fenech as well as evidence collected by the police, therefore drives us to this logical conclusion: if my mother was murdered to prevent her from publishing evidence that was already in the hands of or that would have eventually come into the hands of Ian Abdilla and the FIAU, then Fenech must have been absolutly certain that Ian Abdilla and the Attorney General would never press charges against him or even conduct a full investigation based on that same evidence. Abdilla might say that the evidence was not enough to press charges. Yet, why would evidence that is damming enough for the suspect to commit murder, not be damming enough for the police to press
charges? Furthermore, why are the accountants who also knew this, Brian Tonna and Karl Cini still licensed practicing accountants who derived a significant amount of their income from the state including via embezzlement by means of a phantom job at the Ministry of Justice. There are officers within the Police Force who are determined to do their job properly. I feel I have to say this, like those who protect my family day and night, guarding our home. This is not something new for us, me and my family. Police officers were sent to guard our house even after my mother protested against their presence during events that were considered to be high risk for her for example the hunting referendum, general elections and following the attack by Neo Nazis in 2006. This is not a complete list, these are instances which I remember. Police protection even in the form of neighbourhood patrols was stopped in 2013 under what could only have been an instruction from the new police commissioner appointed by the then Prime Minister, appointed by the Prime Minister sorry, following the removal of John Rizzo. There are only two (2) possible explanations. Either the successive police commissioners appointed by the Prime Minister were negligent and failed to realise that the stories of corruption reported by my mother dealt with people of criminal intent who could harm her or the withdrawal of fixed point
protection and neighbourhood patrols was done to deliberately put my mother at risk by making it easier for the subjects of her investigations to cause her harm.
The Board should bear in mind that physical protection is a last resort. This is my opinion based on years of working as a journalist. A country where journalists who report on corruption and abuse of office have to live with police – I can’t, I can’t view a journalist who reports on corruption and abuse of office have to live with police protection does not have a function in criminal justice system. It is the failure of the police to charge the people implicated in corruption that put my mother at risk in the first place. No reasonable person including myself wants to live with constant police protection, especially a journalist, as it makes it impossible for them to do their job. No confidential source would want to meet a journalist who is effectively being monitored by the state. Again, I feel I have to say this because we are frequently accused of wanting police protection as a kind of status symbol.
To continue, the chain of command in the murder of my mother reveals a complete failure of Malta’s criminal justice system right from the bottom all the way to the top because our criminal justice system was unable to charge and convict the hitmen Alfred Degiogrio, George Degiorgio and Vince Muscat for literally hundreds of crimes committed during their criminal career as going back three
(3) decades or more, they were free to provide their services as hitmen because that same
system was unable to charge and convict the Agius brothers, specifically Robert Agius tal- Maksar, they were free to supply the bomb. Because the police were unable or perhaps unwilling to charge Melvyn Theuma despite ample evidence of an extensive illegal gambling network that he had been running for years, he was free to act as a middleman. Because the police or Attorney General never charged Yorgen Fenech, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri with multiple money laundering and corruption offences which they had solid evidence of, my mother was assassinated to prevent her from desperately trying to plug the gaping hole in our country left by the police and Attorney General. Even after she was murdered, those authorities left Keith Schembri free to derail the murder investigation and cover up the crime. Common factors in all of these failures are Ian Abdilla presiding over an economic crimes unit that is criminally unwilling or unable to fulfil its purpose and the Attorney General Peter Grech, a passive individual based on my experience of interacting with him personally as part of our talks on the public Inquiry, who prioritises personal loyalty to the Prime Minister and other officials over his duty to prosecute money laundering offences.
There is no legitimate explanation for the Attorney General’s passive role and his competency on the investigation of FIAU reports. No country is safe when it’s chief prosecutor is unwilling to tolerate – is willing to
tolerate rampant corruption at all levels of Government. This is a part from a general failure on the Government’s part to allocate the resources required for the police to investigate and prosecute organised crime and break up criminal gangs whether the members of those gangs wear suits or tracksuits. There is more than enough evidence over and above what I have described that a state entity knew or ought to have known of or caused a real and immediate risk to my mother’s life including from the criminals acts of third parties. The police force is the state entity which most failed to take measures within the scope of its powers to avoid a risk of harm to my mother. More specifically the person who most failed to use their powers to avoid that risk is the Police Commissioner.
The public Inquiry will investigate whether the state took preventive operation measures to protect individuals whose lives are at risk from criminal acts, particularly in the case of journalists. It will find as my mother and I found over the years of abuse that no measures of protection were granted. On the contrary. There has been a continuous campaign of de-humanisation and hate towards journalists by criticising specific journalists, by selecting journalists for press conferences, by a tax on journalists by government officials including Glenn Beddingfield, Sandro Craus, Josef Caruana and many others. The Inquiry has a great deal of work to do. Analysing evidence that can make you feel as frustrated at injustice, traumatised
and overwhelmed as it make my mother and me feel. I hope it will at the same time fill you with a sense of anger and awe at the sheer scale of what she was up against and how she never stood a chance.
I encourage the Board to use the first few sittings to call on any person especially public officers to present all documentary evidence they hold related to the terms of the Inquiry. In particular the Inquiry should seek a full unreducted copy of the Egrant report, all the FIAU reports and the police case files on the persons connected to or featuring in my mother’s principal investigation, as well as any records or reports held by the police or FIAU on people implicated in her assassination, from the bottom to the top. The question of how the hitmen were able to receive unemployment benefits while feasting on the proceeds of crime, registering yachts and cars and sending their children to private school, is as important as investigating the reasons behind Keith Schembri, Yorgen Fenech, Konrad Mizzi and Nexia BT’s continued impunity.
The Board finds itself much like us starting an Inquiry when things are happening quickly yet at a point when documentary evidence could well be destroyed. It is therefore important that its first few sittings focus only on collecting such documentary evidence. Following that, the Board can consider that documentation and allow the family to consider it also. The Board must insist on full disclosure. I can’t stress this enough. As an example Mario Cutajar said the day before yesterday that
Theuma did not have a job with the government whereas leaked records later showed otherwise. Following the gathering of documentation the Board can then call those individual responsible for assessing risk to my mother and providing protection as well as those individuals responsible for investigating reports of crime and corruption. These would include all police commissioners from John Rizzo to Lawrence Cutajar, current and former FIAU directors and investigators, Ian Abdilla and the economic crimes unit investigators, MFSA and accountancy board officials as the chief regulators responsible for Pilatus Bank and Nexia BT, the individuals responsable for the tendering process that resulted in the award of the tender to Electogas, all officials involved in the embezzlement of funds to Melvyn Theuma, all officials who threw negligence facilitated the criminal activity of hitmen and others. This isn’t a final list. That is the end of my testimony.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Just a minute please. You stated that up to
2013 there was some form of protection. First of all, what kind of protection was there?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: We know from speaking to John Rizzo that
there were neighbourhood patrols in our area and I know because I was at home at the time or I was still living there that we would have a fixed point guard outside the house. The same thing that we have now.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Up to that point, up to that point, were you
aware of any threats that your mother might have received under any medium?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes, I was and some of them were acted upon
as in when our house was set on fire and now looking back I see the time our dogs were killed or poisoned as a threat and it is not a written threat, but it proceeded greater violence let’s say.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Where those incidents ever investigated?
When the dogs were killed, when the house was set on fire.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Somewhere investigated. When the house was
set on fire in 2006 that was investigated and I remember – I am not sure if it could be called a testimony, but I had gone to speak to a Court Expert at the university.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: You did.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes I did. But it led to nothing.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: I see. And what happened after 2013 then?
How did things change?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Things got worse and worse. It was – my
mother was more and more isolated and there was a campaign to isolate her through propaganda, harassment, Glenn Beddingfield’s blog. But also the varied threats against her intensified. The libel cases intensified. The harassment by police intensified. My father will speak about . . .
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: What do you mean harassment by police?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: So there was one particular incident that I
remember very well because my mother was very traumatised by it when someone had accused her of crashing into him and the police had made a huge fuss of investigating this case, telling my mother to come to the police station with her car. One of the police – no, that was – there was then a separate case where a police
officer actually perjured herself lying about a parking fine that she had given to my mother. There were many of these cases. My father can talk about them in greater detail because he assisted my mother in some way during that time.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Are you aware whether your mother asked for
police protection after 2013?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: No, I am not aware. Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: You are not aware.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: My mother didn’t like talking about these
things to us. That times that I was aware of threats, were because I was in the room and for example she opened a letter with a threatening message and then threw it away or wrote about it on her blog for example.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Was it very often that she received threating
letters? Or for example on the blogs or . . .
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Messages on the blog yes. Those were
frequent because I am a technical person so sometimes I would help my mother manage some technical requirements of running the blogs. So I would go in the administration system and I would see that the comment moderation queued be full of messages intended to intimidate her. One of the instances that I remember the most, because it wasn’t so much the frequency, but the gravity of these instances, and the involvement of people who had access to state resources who were involved in the harassment so I spoke about the police officer. Another instance was when
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: And who was this police officer? Do you know
him?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I can’t remember her name. It is a matter of
public records. My mother reported on it and my father probably has the files from the case too.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: So these police reports that your mother files,
are they available? They are still – I suppose they should be.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: The proceedings from the Courts might be in
my father’s files. I am not sure how far back the police’s records go but the case – this case of the parking ticket for example where a police officer perjured herself, what happened was the police officer gave a statement and when she got off the stand she said to someone else in the Court Room in Maltese: that is what you told me to say, no? And the Magistrate immediately threw out the case.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Threw out the case.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Basically. I suppose that this is – the transcript
is in the Court systems archives. I was talking about the gravity and another instance was when I think I was still at university and a friend of mine at university called me up and told me that someone is driving around the ring road of the university, throwing some kind of printed statement, calling my mother all kinds of things, printed on government watermarked paper. And I immediately called up my mother, my friend got the number plate of the car, my mother filed a police report and it turned out that this person was actually a government employee. So this is what I mean that people in government felt protected. They felt as though they had a kind of immunity when it came to intimidating and harassing my mother,
that they were doing God’s work in a way. With God being their sort of parties in God let’s say.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Ok. And you recall any – after 2013, after 2013
were you witness to any particular, any particular threat that might have worried your mother considerably?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: After 2013? I think the worst one for me was
when Chris Cardona froze her bank accounts because there was no – it is difficult to describe how it feels when that happens. The full power of the state come down on my mother and she felt helpless. I felt absolutely helpless. I thought this is it. It is just going to get worse and worse. There is no way to describe how it felt. It was really – I felt like the ground collapsing from under my feet. Everything that I assumed about the state in Malta disappeared. All the structures that were supposed to be protecting my mother’s rights were instead turning against her.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Did your mother take out any action in order to
have that warrant withdrawn? Are you aware of that? Because legally there is a situation where she could have done that.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I do not know about that. All I know is that her
lawyers came up with this idea that I think was a stroke of genius to ask for Chris Cardona’s cell tower records. I do not know about process to revoke the – I do not know how that would work.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Ok.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Perhaps my mother’s lawyers would know
about it. But my mother would try working around this. In fact the day of her murder, she
was on her way to the bank to speak to the bank about it. And the reason that she came back into the house and that there were two
(2) phone calls between the spotter and the trigger man, is that my mother forgot my father’s check book.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Continue.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: My mother forgot my father’s check book
inside the house because obviously my mother needed to pay for things so my father would sign ten (10) blank checks for example and give the check book to my mother. And this was the sort of work around for that time. But my mother felt confident that she was going to win the case. Once they got the decree saying that the cell tower records would be preserved, for her than it was just a matter of seeing the case through to its end.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: So that day, or the days preceding the
seventeenth (17), did you see any suspicious activity outside your house? Were you there first of all?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I was there yes. Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: You were there. Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Were you aware of any particular activity?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: The only thing that that is suspicious now
looking back is that just before this happened, let’s say in the month leading up to the murder, one of our dogs got very, very, ill and was about to die. The VET did a number of toxicology tests for food poising and was unable to pinpoint the reason for it. He – the dog eventually seemed to be getting slightly better but then died shortly after my mother’s
murder. And now I see this as a perhaps a measure that the hitmen might have taken. They might have thrown a piece of poisoned meat into the garden to poison the dog. Looking back now I think that this might be a possibility. I didn’t see anything. I just had a feeling that things were getting worse and worse and that the situation was getting dangerous. But off course I never imagined that there were hitmen following my mother. I never imagined that. And nothing ever gave me the indication that that was happening. I never noticed anyone following me or anything like that. Never. Even though now I know that they were following me based on what the police told me.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: I see.
Female voice: Matthew, were there any . . .
Male voice: Just a couple of questions because at this stage we have only time to explore how to go about it. Your statement obviously had a lot of fact . .
. Just two (2) questions at this stage. Did your mother ever ask for police protection? Did she ever ask for it?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I do not know and I wouldn’t know. Male voice: You don’t know.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Because my mother’s approach was to not
worry my brothers and I. Even when our – when the front door of our house was set on fire, I remember my father – my father and her telling me that it was an accident and . . .
Male voice: As far as you know she never asked for it. Matthew Caruana Galizia: As far as I know yes. Exactly.
Male voice: As far as you know she never asked for police protection to be withdrawn?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Sorry?
Male voice: Did you ever ask for police protection to be withdrawn?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I do not know. I do not know. I don’t know. Male voice: Now what I think we should do at this stage,
because we have to go by our terms of reference . . .
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Male voice: And strictly speaking our first term of reference is limited as a . . . ok? And therefore what I think we should do, I think you should do, is you pinpoint a – where – a specific institution in Malta in your opinion . . . up to the time of your mother’s murder. What happened after might be relevant to illustrate.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Ok.
Male voice: We are after to see whether at a certain point the institution failed to do what should have done. And also if possible, once your mother . .
. had a long life as a journalist and she also had an aggressive way of doing journalism with might be acceptable to some and not acceptable to others. We would like to know whether you can pinpoint a moment in time when something happened of gravity which might have led to precipitating the negative approach against her. Let’s put it this way. Ok? Let’s say I mean there is some public knowledge. Was it for example the Pilatus Bank closure? Was it the Panama papers thing? Up to that time, was there – would you consider a risk of any person in the authority involving himself . . . . . This is something we would like you to clear and specify in your dossier. You are making a dossier no?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Ok.
Male voice: Put that in your dossier. Ok? Under this aspect that you are going to answer to what first time of reference – because then you have the substitute term of reference which is the general . . . but that is something that we will go in later. Responsible in this stage, otherwise we will get out of hand. Ok?
Female voice: We are trying to prepare a dossier on . . . Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: We are talking about entities here.
Female voice: Yes.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Before persons, entities. That is what we are
obliged to investigate. State entities.
Female voice: We are trying to actually prepare a dossier on who the state entities are. Off course individuals within the state entities.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Off course individuals within the state entities .
. . .
Female voice: Who would have acted as part of that state entity and we are also trying to prepare a dossier for the Board on how these state entities reacted to her work because we thought that might help the board.
Male voice: And it is important to specify that things started to aggravate at a certain moment in time. Otherwise . . .
Female voice: It is just that over the last two (2) weeks so many things have come up and derailed us and we – they have also informed us on what needs to go in.
Male voice: . . . .
Female voice: There was one (1) aspect that I think that Matthew might have forgotten to refer. Where there instances where your mother
actually – was actually fazed with physical aggression?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Male voice: That you are personally aware.
Female voice: That you are personally aware of.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: One of the last ones was when I was walking
through the street in Valletta with my mother and a woman tried to physically assault her. This was in May of 2017. My mother and I were so shocked that we just kept walking. But before that, one of the most worrying ones was when Ignatius Farrugia who is a mayor of Zurrieq I think . . .
Female voice: He was.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Was. Sorry. Led a group of people, a mob
basically, after my mother, taunting her and shouting at her and my mother feared for her safety.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: When was that? Can you give us more details
about that incident?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: That must have been around 2014 I think. It
must have been around that time.
Female voice: Wasn’t it at a feast in Rabat?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: It was at a feast in Rabat. My mother wrote
about it in detail and she also filed a complaint that led to a . . .
Female voice: Court case.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes. And what happened with that Court case,
at the end I think, a travesty of justice.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Why?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Because the Magistrate made a mistake in the
judgement and as a result of this mistake, Ignatius Farrugia was pardoned if I remember well. And he served no effective sentence or
the conviction was overturned. Whatever the legal term is for the result of that pardoning.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: But was she actually physically threatened in
that incident?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I think yes there was a physical threat. If a large
group of people is being incited by someone to chase down a journalist, it begs the question what are they going to do when they catch up with that journalist? They are not going to want to shake her hand.
Female voice: Did she not seek refuge in a convent? Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes she did. She did.
Male voice: But you mentioned Commissioner Rizzo no? Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Male voice: And up to that moment in time your mother was protected.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I think that to a certain decree we felt
protected that at moments of – first of all I have to stress that this is not normal that a police Commissioner should feel that at the time of an election or a referendum or whatever, my mother would need this protection, that is not a normal situation for a democracy. But at least when for example during – after the result of an election I could hear from our house cars coming up the hill with the horns blurring and there were supporters of – heading to our house. I said ok, at least there are police outside the house, so I would say if they come here with a gun or whatever, the police you know will warn them off.
Male voice: Because you will agree that it is the duty of the police to protect any person who in their opinion might be subject to a serious threat.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Male voice: It is their duty. Matthew Caruana Galizia: I agree with that.
Male voice: Even if it is a journalist.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I agree with that, but this is what I wanted to
say and say in the statement that that should be considered a measure of last resort because one has to consider the fact that such violent people are fee and I think this is something that has to be acknowledged and that are not just free but being financed by the state in the case of Melvyn Theuma for example. I mean to hear Melvyn Theuma speaking with such normality about murdering my mother – anyway . . .
Male voice: Try to speak about what happened before. Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: We tend to loose the . . . Matthew Caruana Galizia: You are right, sorry.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Ok. Xi haga ohra?
Female voice: Minn dan ix-xhud le. Pero’ xtaqna li forsi jibda’ wkoll Peter Caruana Galizia jaghti l-istqarrija tieghu ‘l ghaliex Peter Caruana Galizia kien maghha.
Male voice: You can step down. Thank you.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Just a minute. You have a question from
Madam Justice Lofaro.
Madam Justice Lofaro: So you mentioned that the police presence was
removed after 2013. How long did it take to be removed?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I am not really sure but I guess with the
removal of John Rizzo things changed.
Madam Justice Lofaro: OK.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: John Rizzo was and I know this because I was
present when they spoke, he would speak to
my mother. They – it wasn’t sort of a friendship or anything like that he felt that he had to sort of maintain communication with my mother in order to make sure that nothing would happen to her. And again I know this because I spent some time working in my mother’s office and I was there when my mother had these phone calls with John Rizzo and we spoke about it.
Madam Justice Lofaro: But then you mentioned the hunting
referendum?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Madam Justice Lofaro: And that wasn’t so far off was it?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: No, I can’t remember exactly when that was.
2013? ’14? ’15? It couldn’t have been later
than 2015.
Madam Justice Lofaro: Upon the referendum you did have police
protection for a while.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes we did. My father will confirm but I
remember because . . .
Madam Justice Lofaro: Yes.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Again, it was one of those times where I was at
home, hearing the car cades sort of heading in the direction of our house and I thought ok, at least the police are outside.
Madam Justice Lofaro: What about after the 2017 election? Matthew Caruana Galizia: After the 2017 election . . . .
Madam Justice Lofaro: I mean, did you have police protection after
the results were announced?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: You know, the strange thing is I can’t
remember. That period for me was a period of such high stress because I felt that we were at such high risk that my memory of it is very – like a bad memory.
Madam Justice Lofaro: You do not recall. Ok.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: No. My father will remember for sure. Madam Justice Lofaro: Thank you.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: We asked the police for – in fact we can
present our questions and the responses from the police about threat assessments that were done in my mother’s regard and so on.
Madam Justice Lofaro: How many times was there – did you ask the
police for this risk assessment?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: We asked the police for a risk assessment in
our regard – in my family’s regard after my mother was murdered.
Madam Justice Lofaro: After she was – yes. Matthew Caruana Galizia: Twice (2) I think.
Madam Justice Lofaro: Not before? Never before?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Before? Because I wasn’t aware that sort of
such a concept existed and neither was my mother really. It was only after we got security training and so on that I became aware that this is what should happen. Anyway. But the conversations with John Rizzo would be him and my mother talking about whether my mother felt safe and so on.
Madam Justice Lofaro: But with his successors there was not this
relationship?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: No and . . .
Madam Justice Lofaro: With none of them?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: With none of them. It was impossible because
my mother – my mother was investigating them.
Madam Justice Lofaro: Yes. Matthew Caruana Galizia: So I mean . . .
Male voice: Your mother worked on head on.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes she did. I supported her in the last year of
her life especially.
Male voice: And what would you say is the moment in time when she started getting worried about her safety? I mean before she was . . . but then in a moment in time something happened apparently which alerted her. This is something so serious I should be careful here.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: I think when – there was one key moment
when again because I spoke about this with my mother and she told me how she felt when she broke the story about Keith Schembri undergoing cancer treatment which was in November 2016.
Male voice: Well before the Panama papers?
Matthew Caruana Galizia: No, it was after. In fact that was based on the
Panama papers because my mother noticed that in one of the documents that was published which was his accounts – bank account statements which he gave as proof of address, there was a line from a hospital in Italy and eventually she established that this was for cancer treatment. She published the story and she was shocked at how sort of vindictively Keith Schembri reacted whereas at the time she thought that it is a minor story that will elicit public sympathy for him, because obviously, normally, when people find out that you are dying of cancer, it elicits sympathy. So she didn’t think that that story would elicit this response from him but he reacted very, very, violently. Sort of in a kind of with legal harassment. And after that things got worse and worse. It was a though all the people that my mother was reporting – investigating, Silvio Debono, Keith Schembri, Chris Cardona, Konrad Mizzi formed a constellation of
interests directing towards shutting my mother up and this is how she felt. In fact in one conversation she told my brother: I feel like they are frying me alive.
Male voice: But that approach would need a . . . conclusion that is by hindsight being appreciated that your mother was not murdered because she was about to divulge something really serious about somebody else. I mean . . .
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes, not exactly. I mean, the police . . . .
Male voice: We have this other scene that she might have been on the point of revealing something.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes. There was – the most important thing to
the people she was investigating was the money laundering network between shall companies of Yorgen Fenech, Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and eventually shell companies controlled by Azerbaijani nationals. Now, in – at the beginning of 2017 my mother started received document leaked from a whistle- blower, documents from Electrogas, underacted contracts, e mails, invoices, all kinds of documents from the company. Now the reason why I discount this although not entirely, is that the leak continued and I know because I was in direct communication with the whistle-blower before my mother’s murder and also after, that the leak did not stop until April 2018. So if that was what Yorgen Fenech was worried about, then he would have had the ability to stop it by rooting out the whistle- blower. Electrogas has a very small number of
– at the time had even a smaller number of people working there. It would have been relatively easy to do this. But that didn’t
happen. The leak only stopped when the Daphne Project announced that it was about to start publishing stories on Electrogas based on this leak. Then it stopped. Then I could see from the e mails that they began taking internal action to root out the whistle-blower and eventually sort of shut everything down. Then the leak stopped completely.
Male voice: That was more the Panama papers and this after mud that you think . . . because I do not think anybody would say that a person would murder somebody because he insulted – I mean it could happen but normally in such a situation considering I mean there must have been something very serious.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes.
Male voice: Above harassment and that sort of thing. And that is what we are trying to – I mean . . . exclude or at least I should exclude Electrogas then the only major event that apparently would lead to this sort of thing are matters connected with Panama papers. I do not know.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: The thing to remember is and this is why I put
it in the statement is that Electrogas is a vehicle for the money laundering network that the – that Mossack Fonseca helped set up. What you see in the Panama papers and what we discovered in 2016 is a section of this money laundering network that Yorgen Fenech presumably was afraid my mother was going to uncover. What we have been uncovering over the past two (2) years is other sections of this money laundering network, for example the fact that 17 Black was owned by Yorgen Fenech. This is something that we did not
know in 2016 or 2017. So, and remember that
– or rather these facts which we are uncovering indicate that the key purpose of this money laundering network was to funnel money or to safen money from the Electrogas creation, because you have to call it that. If we assume that Yorgen Fenech is the person who commissioned my mother’s assassination, then we also assume that there was corruption behind his endeavour and therefore Electrogas is not something that has legitimate economic rational because if it had legitimate economic rational there would be no need for corruption. It would not be necessary. They would have won the tender normally let’s say. So once you take that logical route, you then start to see Electogas as just another vehicle for corruption and not let’s say a separate investigation or a separate entity that my mother was investigating. I hope I explained myself well.
Male voice: The problem is that Mr. Fenech, and I am not talking about the Panama papers ok . . . (could not understand what he is saying) . . . I mean, you have to build up a whole picture to see where the institution failed.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Yes, correct.
Male voice: I mean, therefore we must find definite points where to start.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: So 17 Black is the vehicle of Yorgen Fenech that
features in the Panama papers. Yorgen Fenech would have had his own, his own let’s say financial facilitators that would have set up his own vehicle.
Male voice: But 17 Black is there.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Exactly. So Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri
would have used Nexia BT which would in turn have used Mossack Fonseca to set up their vehicles. Yorgen Fenech would have used as yet unknown corporate services provider to set up his own vehicles. Now, before I forget, again this is something I mention in the statement. The authorities were aware of 17 Black in 2016 because of what I said in the statement that there was some kind of compliance visit or sort of raid light let’s call it, on Nexia BT and as a result the e mails or some form of documentation mentioning 17 Black and Macbridge into the hands of the authorities. So, once that happened, investigators then began as early as 2016 trying to figure out who 17 Black belonged to. So one thing that has to be looked at is why almost four (4) years later that process has apparently not come to a conclusion which is something that I find unbelievable that four (4) years later the police are still trying in inverted comas to figure out who really owns 17 Black. Now that might have been derailed at the diplomatic level, at the police level or elsewhere. Either of those things might have happened. One thing that we discovered recently is that many of the requests or possibly all the requests were directed to diplomatic representation, Malta’s diplomatic representation in the United Arab Emirates but at the same time Malta’ representative in the United Arab Emirates either – I can’t remember whether his name is Anthony Tabone or Philip Tabone, owns a company called Beat Ltd. that is itself in
business with Electrogas. So there are – we need to establish: 1. How does this – this was allowed to happen at a sort of public service level? And 2. how it is possible that no one at any point in this entire process spoke up about the process being derailed.
Male voice: What we would like you to do is work on the dossier . . .
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Ok.
Male voice: . . . because we need to have these parameters more clearly pictured.
Madam Justice Lofaro: Established.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: In the meantime you can hear the evidence of
your father.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Ok.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: We will take a short break of ten (10) minutes
and then we will hear your father.
Matthew Caruana Galizia: Ok.
Onor. Judge Michael Mallia: Ten (10) minutes. Madam Justice Lofaro: Thank you.