Proceedings have finally begun in Valletta against Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to a Maltese property empire, over the 2017 car-bomb assassination of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Fenech is named in the indictment as the instigator of the plot, facing charges of complicity in homicide and criminal association with the perpetrators of the killing.
He is the last of seven men to face trial over the assassination, which sent shockwaves through Malta and drew intense international scrutiny over the rule of law in the EU’s smallest member state.
The attorney general is seeking a life sentence on the murder charge and up to 30 years on the criminal association charge, while Fenech firmly rejects all charges against him.
Fenech was arrested in 2019 aboard his yacht as he allegedly attempted to flee Malta, two years after the killing had taken place.
The case nearly stalled again just days before it was due to begin, when Fenech filed a petition with the Constitutional Court on June 25th claiming his right to a fair trial had been violated.
He alleged that a listening device had been installed in a prison meeting room where he consulted with his lawyers, but the court rejected his request to suspend proceedings and jury selection went ahead on July 1.
Jury selection itself proved contentious, taking five hours due to concerns over intense media coverage, with officials forced to intervene after a reserve juror fainted as temperatures reached 33°C.
Under Maltese law, jurors will be sequestered for the full duration of the trial, housed in a hotel and barred from using phones, computers, or smartwatches.
According to the indictment, Fenech first approached his friend and taxi driver Melvin Theuma about killing Caruana Galizia, whom he feared was on the verge of publishing damaging revelations about him and an uncle.
Theuma then contacted brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, agreeing on a fee of €150,000, which he says he received from Fenech in cash inside a brown envelope.
Theuma later received a presidential pardon in exchange for his testimony against Fenech and has been living under a witness protection program since 2019.
At the time of her death, Caruana Galizia had been investigating a controversial power station deal linked to Fenech, and it later emerged he owned a secretive offshore company called “17 Black,” which she had also been probing.
In June 2025, men accused of supplying the explosives, Robert Agius and Jamie Vella, were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole, while the Degiorgio brothers are serving 40-year terms and accomplice Vincent Muscat is serving 15 years.
Caruana Galizia had spent years exposing corruption at the highest levels of Maltese politics and business, and her assassination ultimately forced then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to resign in January 2020 amid mass protests.
A 2021 public inquiry found the government bore responsibility for fostering a “state of impunity” in which Caruana Galizia’s killers believed they could murder her and escape justice.
Her husband, three sons, and two sisters have attended the Fenech proceedings, just as they attended the previous trials connected to the case.
On Friday, her younger sister Mandy Mallia posted on social media about the pain of hearing alleged recordings of Fenech insisting that Caruana Galizia must absolutely not survive the attack.
“Justice for Daphne can’t come soon enough,” Mallia wrote. “Malta must step up.”
The trial is expected to run for several weeks, with the proceedings being watched closely both inside Malta and across Europe.
