Reporters Without Borders files complaint in France in connection with Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder
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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and close relatives of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia filed a complaint yesterday with the French financial prosecutor’s office and the Paris public prosecutor asking them to investigate three leading Maltese citizens on suspicion of giving or taking bribes and complicity in Caruana Galizia’s murder.
The complaint filed by the lawyer Emmanuel Daoud on behalf of RSF and the Caruana Galizia family names Yorgen Fenech, a businessman now under arrest in Malta, Keith Schembri, who has just resigned as the prime minister’s chief of staff, and Konrad Mizzi, who has just resigned as tourism minister.
RSF and the Caruana Galizia family believe that Fenech used income from assets he owns in France to bribe these two Maltese politicians in order to get a lucrative state contract – which Caruana Galizia was investigating just before her death – and to pay those who planted the car bomb that killed Caruana Galizia on 16 October 2017.
Following these developments, RSF and the Caruana Galizia family, who were assisted by the lawyer Emmanuel Daoud, discovered that Fenech owned major assets in France, including the Evian-lesBains Hilton Hotel.
Fenech also owns a race-horse stable in France that yielded several hundred thousand euros in profits from January 2015 to December 2017.
In the light of these facts, the plaintiffs think the national financial prosecutor’s officer or the Paris public prosecutor should open a preliminary or full judicial investigation.
“The murder of a journalist in a European Union country cannot go unpunished,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “As the assets in France of one of the probable masterminds may have been used to pay the perpetrators of this appalling crime, the French judicial authorities must investigate and help establish the truth.”
Malta is ranked 77th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2019 World Press Freedom Index, after falling 30 places in the past two years.
