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Secret audio recordings captured on a device hidden in a sock, along with text messages presented in a Maltese courtroom, laid bare the mechanics behind the 2017 assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia—linking a prominent tycoon to hitmen, cash payoffs, and high-level government leaks.
The recordings were played at the trial of Yorgen Fenech, the businessman accused of ordering the assassination. Caruana Galizia, 53, was killed by a car bomb placed beneath the driver’s seat of her vehicle and detonated remotely via SMS on the outskirts of Mosta.
Five men—George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio, Vince Muscat, Robert Agius, and Jamie Vella—have all been convicted for their roles in the murder. Fenech denies any involvement and has pleaded not guilty.
The tapes were recorded by Melvin Theuma, a confessed middleman who was granted a presidential pardon in exchange for evidence. Theuma hid the recorder in his sock and began taping Fenech in April 2018, months after the hitmen were arrested.
“I started recording Yorgen because I needed the proof,” he told jurors. “I knew they were going to betray me either by killing me or throwing me in jail.”
Theuma testified that the plot to murder Caruana Galizia began at the Blue Elephant restaurant roughly three weeks before Malta's 2017 general election. “Yorgen Fenech said: see what you can do; let's get hold of [hitman George Degiorgio], we're going to murder Caruana Galizia because of some information that's going to come out,” Theuma testified.
Theuma said that he negotiated a price of 150,000 euro (about $173,000) with a 30,000 euro deposit through George's brother Alfred. Both Degiorgio brothers have since pleaded guilty to carrying out the bombing.
Fenech paused the plan when the election was called, Theuma said, and revived it after the Labour Party's victory, handing him an envelope of 50 euro notes. "I asked him what these were and he said they were for Daphne.”
What followed, Theuma testified, was a relentless campaign of pressure. Fenech checked on the plot's progress "every four days," once texting that he would "get the champagne ready; maybe it'll happen today." In another instance, he issued a gruesome instruction: "Make sure they don't use a bomb on her, and it ends up like Romeo Bone's, and they only take her legs off."
When the hitmen lost track of the journalist, Fenech passed along information about where she could be found, according to the testimony.
"Daphne died because we killed her," Theuma told the court, breaking down repeatedly as he apologized to her family.
The recordings played for the jury exposed not only the mechanics of the contract killing, but also how deep the conspiracy reached into Malta's political establishment.
In one tape, Fenech describes telling Keith Schembri, then chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, about the murder: “When I told [Schembri], he froze. I told him, there isn't another way now. He told me... that he wanted her burnt not just once but a hundred times.”
“She broke them. They were angry. Joseph and all,” Fenech says on the tape.
Fenech can be heard asking Schembri whether he had done something wrong, to which the chief of staff allegedly answered, “What do you mean, wrong? You should have told me beforehand.”
In another tape, Fenech says Schembri admitted sending Kenneth Camilleri, a member of the prime minister's security detail, to see Theuma: “He told me: Yorgen, I sent [Kenneth Camilleri].” Theuma testified that Camilleri told him the jailed hitmen would be granted bail and 1 million euro each. Camilleri has denied that Schembri sent him or that any bail arrangement existed.
The recordings also capture Fenech naming Schembri and then-deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta as his sources for information about the investigation. On tape, Fenech says he was briefed on details from a Cabinet-level meeting regarding hitman Vince Muscat's pardon request, which was attended by the prime minister. Schembri, who previously testified at the trial, denied tipping anyone off, and Valletta denied passing information to Fenech.
In the first tape, from April 2018, Fenech reassures Theuma that “[Vince] knows we have friends like Valletta,” and instructs him not to “remove anything from the bank. Don't shift banks. In fact, stick to normal things.”
In a final recording, Fenech expressed satisfaction with German authorities' failure to return Caruana Galizia's laptops, saying it would “confuse people's minds” by casting suspicion on everyone she wrote about. “For me it's better, personally,” he said.
Fenech estimated that 300 people had a motive to kill her, while telling Theuma—according to the middleman's testimony—that if he had known how big the case would become, he would “definitely not” have gone through with it.
Nevertheless, the payments to the hitmen continued for two years. "We promised them we'd carry on,” Fenech told Theuma.
Screenshots from a chat with a contact saved as “Yurgin,” which Theuma confirmed was Fenech, were presented to jurors as evidence.
The final messages came in November 2019: Fenech told Theuma his arrest “will happen on Saturday” and to “clean up everything.” Theuma was arrested that Saturday, carrying an ice cream box filled with the recordings.
The trial continues, with Fenech's defense set to resume cross-examination.
