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7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JULY 2026 FEATURE Who is Yorgen Fenech? Born into one of Malta's richest families, Yorgen Fenech stands accused of masterminding the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. With his trial by jury now underway, Kurt Sansone looks at Fenech's family history and how he rose to the helm of a business empire BORN in 1982 to a power- ful business family, Yorgen Fenech's teenage years coincid- ed with the politically intense period that characterised Mal- ta's EU accession talks. It was also a period of rapid growth for the Tumas Group, the family company then cap- tained by Yorgen's late father, George Fenech—the eldest of seven siblings. The company's flagship pro- ject, Portomaso, in St Julian's was reaching its pinnacle—the reconstructed Hilton Hotel was opened in February 2000, while the 23-storey Portomaso Tower, Malta's highest build- ing until then, was completed a year later. From Easysell to Portomaso Portomaso, which also includ- ed luxury apartments clustered around an artificially created 115-berth marina, occupies a sprawling seafront estate on Malta's east coast. The tower, which has since been dwarfed by higher buildings, remains iconic for its blue-tinted glass and orange cladding; it is a symbol of the Tumas Group. The company knows its be- ginning to George's father, Tu- mas Fenech from Qormi, who started dealing in property in the late 1960s and by the 1970s set up his first companies. Easysell Ltd, operated a show- room that imported and sold furniture, later expanding into car imports. Eventually, in the 1980s the company expanded into the hotel industry. However, the Portomaso pro- ject in the late 1990s and ear- ly 2000s was a major turning point. The estate where the project took off had been leased by the government to private investors back in the 1960s to build the Hilton Hotel, which was inaugurated in 1967. The land also housed the remains of the Knights era Spinola Bat- tery, which were substantially demolished to make way for the Portomaso project. It was in 1986 that Tumas Fenech purchased the Hilton Hotel and added it to the com- pany's growing portfolio of ho- tels—the Topaz and the Dol- men in St Paul's Bay, and the Halland in Swieqi. The compa- ny later bought and rebuilt the Mġarr Hotel in Għajnsielem, overlooking Gozo's Mġarr Port. In 1995 and 1996, the Tumas Group obtained planning per- mits approved by representa- tives of the two major parties on the planning board, to build the mixed-use Portomaso pro- ject amid public controversy over the lifting of a government condition that limited develop- ment on the site to tourism. The company eventually paid €1.8 million in 2006 to redeem the public lease and buy the Portomaso land outright from the government. It was a pit- tance compared to the millions generated from the develop- ment on land that had been leased on the cheap. Today, the Tumas Group's commercial interests range from luxury real estate devel- opments to port handling ser- vices in the Grand Harbour; from casinos to online gaming, and overseas investments. For a short while between 2011 and 2014, the company had al- so been a minority shareholder together with Arriva in a trans- port company that was granted a 10-year concession to oper- ate the scheduled bus service. The company was eventually nationalised as Malta Public Transport after years of losses. CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE > KURT SANSONE ksansone@mediatoday.com.mt Yorgen Fenech is one of the heirs of the Tumas Group that owns the iconic Portomaso Tower and complex that includes the Hilton Hotel, luxury residences and a yacht marina