Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb blast in October 2017. Now one of the main defendants from prison has confessed to the crime. It was “business as usual”.
In October 2017, Maltese journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car was blown up. Five years later, George Degiorgio, one of the main defendants in custody, told a Reuters journalist that he would have asked for more money for the hit-and-run had he known more about Caruana Galizia.
He would then have asked for ten million euros and not 150,000, which he claims he received for the murder, Reuters quoted Degiorgio as saying. And further: “For me it was just a business. Yes, business as usual,” Degiorgio is quoted as saying. He’s “of course” sorry for the act.
The conversation between the Reuters journalist and Degiorgio came about as part of research for a podcast intended to work up the murder of Caruana Galizia.
Almost a year ago, a public committee of inquiry made serious allegations against the government of Malta. This failed to protect the blogger from dangers to her life, as the report said, according to “dpa”. Among other things, the committee concluded that a “culture of impunity” had developed in the top echelons of the Maltese government in the years up to 2017, when she was killed.
This culture has also spread to other parts of the state, such as the police force. It ultimately led to a “collapse of the rule of law,” the report said.
The public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s murder began in June 2019 under pressure from the EU. In 93 hearings, three judges heard 120 witnesses. With the final report, the committee found ample evidence of an accommodating relationship between the government of Malta and the business world. When Caruana Galizia uncovered the foreign transactions of top politicians in the course of the publication of the so-called Panama Papers in 2016, the risks to her life increased sharply.
