Assassination attempt on journalist: The situation is desperate, she wrote shortly before her death

Daphne Caruana Galizia had no illusions. For over 20 years, she had angered the powerful in Malta with her revelations. But it changed: nothing. "Our police have no will to do anything," she said in early May. The judiciary is an instrument of the rulers, they prevent investigations.

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Issue 43/2017

Power and abuse

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And yet, the 53-year-old continued, blogger, missionary and educator in one, to uncover the dark sides of the sun's island.

For Caruana Galizia was convinced that her country had fallen into the hands of the mafia and corrupt politicians, and she saw it as her duty to change that. That was doomed to her.

On Monday, a car bomb tore her to death; a professional assassination, apparently committed with plastic explosives. Half an hour before she had written her last blog post: "There are scammers everywhere, the situation is desperate."

Two weeks earlier, she had turned to the police for feeling threatened.

"My mother was murdered because she was between the rule of law and those who rape the law," wrote her son Matthew on Facebook. The state institutions stopped working, and Malta's government tolerated "a culture of impunity." State and organized crime are almost impossible to separate. The opposition leader also spoke of a "political murder" and that on the island "the laws of the jungle" prevailed.

It seems as if the journalist had to die first, so that the world looks more closely at this holiday island between Europe and Africa, but also: tax haven, money laundering, center of weapons, drugs and oil smuggling from and to Libya. A meeting place for seedy wheelers and Gaddafi people, mafiosi and Russians who have bought a Maltese nationality.

It was these machinations that Caruana Galizia wrote about. First as a journalist and co-editor of the "Malta Independent", later in her blog Running Commentary. Her articles were spicy, sometimes even aggressive, and she did not shy away from personal attacks, she was not always able to provide evidence. But Caruana Galizia was often right. For many Maltese, she became a hero, her revelations were island talk.

Her favorite opponent was the government, especially Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Two months before an international journalist consortium uncovered the scandal called the Panama Papers, the journalist accused the then-secretary of energy and the head of the cabinet of the Prime Minister of opening mailbox companies in Panama in 2013. The journalist suspected that it was receiving bribes from Azerbaijan, possibly in connection with a gas supply contract from Baku to Malta.

The Minister of Energy had to resign, but denied the corruption allegations; the Cabinet chief, Muscat's closest collaborator, remained in office. In another case, threatened him even a criminal case: An investigating judge saw the suspicion confirmed that the head of the Cabinet had received from three Russians who wanted to become citizens of Malta, almost 167,000 euros.

In the spring Caruana Galizia revealed another scandal: Michelle Muscat, the wife of the Prime Minister, owns a mailbox company in Panama, whose account in early 2016, more than one million euros were transferred - by a company of the daughter of Azerbaijani President Ilcham Aliyev.

At the beginning of May, Caruana Galizia presented her chief witness at a meeting with SPIEGEL: a blonde Russian woman who called herself "Maria", an ex-employee of the Maltese Pilatus Bank. A bank that Caruana Galizia described as a "pure money laundering event". Several members of the Aliyev family, according to the Russian, are said to have been among their most important customers. She claimed to have seen the transfers to the accounts of Muscat's Panama company. These allegations repeated several times under oath before an investigating judge, the bank contradicted. In the summer, however, the Russian left Malta, feeling threatened and pressured.

A final report by the Panama Committee of Inquiry into the European Parliament this week also seems to confirm Caruana Galizia's suspicions. There, Malta is cited as one of the countries whose banks and law firms have massively set up mailbox companies in Panama, to the detriment of other EU members, who are likely to have escaped large sums of tax. In addition, Malta has created a huge online betting industry that offers ideal opportunities for money laundering.

Prime Minister Muscat has always rejected all allegations against him. Despite the revelations, he was re-elected in June. In order to avoid the suspicion of the cover-up, he has now asked the American FBI for assistance in the investigation of the murder.

It is true that a European Public Prosecutor's Office has recently been set up to investigate damage caused to the EU. But so far only 20 Member States are involved. Malta is not among them.