Africa-Press – Mauritius. A political and institutional crisis in Malta ensued the uncovering of alleged links between government officials and the 2017 assassination of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. According to press reports, Caruana Galizia had led the Panama Papers investigation into corruption in Malta.
A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country’s newspapers, she had been described before her death by the Politico website as a “one-woman WikiLeaks”.
Her assassination, the Caruana Galizia family said, was “a direct result of the collapse of the rule of law and the impunity that the state provided to the corrupt network she was reporting on”. The European Parliament stepped in to condemn the murder.
At a plenary session last October, members of the Parliament expressed their concern that, one year after the publication of an inquiry conducted by one serving judge and two retired judges, the implementation of its recommendations is “deficient’, and said they are appalled by the lack of progress in prosecuting the high-level corruption and money laundering that Caruana Galizia had been investigating, and are alarmed by the “institutional failure of law enforcement and justice”.
Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb as she drove away from her home on 16 October 2017. According to The Guardian, prosecutors were of the view that businessman Yorgen Fenech, who had close ties with senior government officials, masterminded the murder.
The report of the inquiry, which was made public by the current Prime Minister Robert Abela, concluded that a culture of impunity was created by the highest echelons of power within the government of the time.
“The tentacles of impunity then spread to other regulatory bodies and the police, leading to a collapse in the rule of law”. It was clear, the inquiry board said, that the assassination was either intrinsically or directly linked to Caruana Galizia’s investigative work.
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