Malta's Anti-Corruption Campaigner Silenced
Malta is the largest online gambling jurisdiction in the world. In recent months the island nation has sought to rid itself of Mafia-connected Italian ventures. Those efforts were met with a violent warning as one of the more prominent crusaders against corruption there had her car blown to smithereens.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, journalist, blogger had finally been silenced.
The incident occurred last October. The Wire goes into more vivid detail, accounting what had transpired and what led up to the tragedy.
That bombing last October did more than kill Daphne, as she was universally known on the island. It ripped open the dark side of Malta, a rocky speck in the Mediterranean that is a full member of the European Union – and a haven for people dealing in online gambling, offshore finance and cryptocurrencies. The brazen assassination and the lawlessness it implies appalled not only Daphne’s friends and family, but also political leaders across Western Europe.
Three men have been charged with her murder. They deny the charges. Police believe the person who ordered the bombing is still at large. Malta’s government told Reuters: “Her murder is being investigated vigorously” and that “police will have whatever resources they need to pursue and prosecute those responsible.”
A Reuters investigation, in collaboration with more than 15 other media groups, including Suddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde and France 2 television, sheds new light on Daphne’s complex character and life, and for the first time pieces together in detail key elements of the plot to kill her. This story is part of the Daphne Project, an investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based group that continues the work of journalists silenced through murder or imprisonment.
For her son Matthew, who spoke extensively to Reuters, the events of that October day remain horribly vivid. He doesn’t know who ordered his mother’s murder, but he does believe, as do some European Union officials, that the nature of Maltese politics and society made her assassination possible. There was a toleration of corruption, he says, that enabled such acts.
