Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1546315
maltatoday | TUESDAY • 26 AUGUST 2026 YORGEN FENECH TRIAL and the Muscat-era nexus Both rejected the suggestion that their offshore companies and business dealings were ev- idence of corruption, present- ing them as legitimate arrange- ments. But Melvin Theuma offered a very different picture. He told the jury that Fenech was so concerned about the 17 Black revelations that he even offered money to the Nationalist Party to prevent David Casa from be- ing re-elected an MEP. Casa had been writing and campaigning heavily about 17 Black. That allegation, if accept- ed, would sit awkwardly with Fenech's portrayal of 17 Black as a legitimate business matter that caused him little concern. Obsession: Schembri's motive in Fenech's narrative The motive that Fenech's nar- rative attributed to Schembri was personal hostility towards Daphne Caruana Galizia, rather than preventing the journalist from exposing corruption relat- ed to Electrogas and 17 Black. Asked who he believed was re- sponsible for the assassination, Fenech dryly replied: "Keith Schembri is the mastermind." He also claimed the prosecu- tion was missing the bigger pic- ture: "His [Schembri's] finger- prints are all over it; you're just not seeing it." A central element to Fenech's narrative is Caruana Galizia's reporting about Schembri's eye tumour and health. Fenech tes- tified that Schembri was deep- ly affected by it. The issue was so personal that Schembri's daughter had asked him: "Dad- dy, are you going to die?" In Fenech's account, Schem- bri's motivation was deeply per- sonal with the sequence moving towards the murder plot and Theuma telling him: "We'll get rid of her quickly." Fenech said he subsequently raised the matter with Schem- bri, who allegedly responded: "Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead." Fenech's account presented Schembri as a powerful man, whose personal grievance and obsession with Caruana Galizia ultimately intersected with the murder plot. A businessman amongst criminals Fenech also constructed a particular self-portrait from the witness stand. He depicted himself as a businessman, who became entangled with people considerably more dangerous than himself. He described the people around Theuma as "the worst people in Malta" and spoke of fearing Theuma, despite acknowledging that he had worked for his father for many years. In reference to the mur- derous plot, Fenech insisted: "I am not into these sorts of things." Theuma, by contrast, de- scribed Fenech as a lion: "I'm a mosquito compared to him. Who would believe me without the recordings?" Prosecutor Godwin Cini put that characterisation to Fenech, asking whether he accepted Theuma's description of him- self as a mosquito and Fenech as a lion. "Absolutely not," Fenech re- plied. He added: "I had a lot of contacts who were high up, but if you look at my phone, I also had plenty of contacts who held no power at all." His self-portrait is therefore not of a businessman at the cen- tre of a corrupt political-busi- ness network, who used crim- inal intermediaries to protect his own interests. It is of a busi- nessman who became entan- gled with dangerous people and was subsequently threatened and blackmailed to the point of being entangled in a murder plot he claimed never to have ordered. Crucially, while admitting to giving Theuma €50,000 after learning of the murder plot, Fenech presented himself as having been the victim, caught in an extortionate relationship with dangerous people. That narrative will have to be tested against the recordings made by Theuma and the ac- tions he admitted making. But it is the narrative Fenech has pre- sented to the jury. The friends network around Fenech But one thing emerged strik- ingly from the trial—Fenech's relationships and level of famili- arity with people occupying po- sitions of public authority. The network examined in court extended beyond politics and big business to regulators and public institutions. Fenech's relationships or con- tacts included former deputy police commissioner Silvio Val- letta, former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, former MFSA chief Joseph Cuschieri, former MGA chief Heathcliff Farrugia, former tax commissioner Mar- vin Gaerty, former police an- ti-money-laundering chief Ray Aquilina, Planning Authority CEO Johann Buttigieg and then Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar. In one exchange read out in court, Cutajar asked Fenech to "find out" for her any informa- tion in the context of a Cabinet reshuffle. In another exchange, Johann Buttigieg told Fenech: "When you want, I'll do busi- ness. I will do business with you wherever you want." Fenech dismissed the latter as "just business jargon". Silvio Valletta was both a close friend, a senior police officer in- volved in the murder investiga- tion, and a member of the FIAU board. They travelled together for football and Fenech paid for tickets. When the prosecution sug- gested these relationships demonstrated that Fenech ex- ploited access to powerful peo- ple, he replied: "I did not take advantage of them." Yorgen even presented himself as a benefactor to anyone, hint- ing that he had even "helped" parte civile lawyer Jason Azz- opardi, without substantiating the claim. And ultimately, central to the case is the friendship between the scion of the Tumas family and the former chief of staff of the prime minister—a friend- ship which ended with Fenech blaming Schembri for murder. Fenech also implicated Schem- bri in keeping him abreast of pending investigations. The leaks included a confidential Europol report and a court deci- sion (hours before being issued) concerning a request for a mag- isterial inquiry into 17 Black. But Fenech did not portray him as the architect of a wider web of corrupt dealings, spanning different public entities. In short, the prosecution sees a network. Fenech sees personal relationships. The political irony This is the unusual political irony at the heart of the trial. For while some vocal PN sup- porters have been fired up by the defence's strategy to blame the murder on Keith Schembri, it is also a narrative that absolves Yorgen Fenech from involve- ment in the corruption and impropriety denounced by civil society activists. This is politically remarkable. The man arguably best placed to expose the inner workings of the system is instead largely defending the legitimacy of his own dealings within it. While shifting the blame onto Schem- bri, Fenech is not really bring- ing the Muscat era eco-system of improper relationships, down with him. In his narrative Schembri was simply "obsessed with killing Daphne Caruana Galizia" for deeply personal rea- sons. On the other hand, the prose- cution is constructing its mur- der case against the background of the corruption scandals and networks that defined the Mus- cat years. In that sense, the murder trial is partly vindicating the con- cerns raised by anti-corruption activists over the years about the proximity between political power and big money. A power nexus under the spotlight But this does not mean the po- litical ecosystem navigated by Fenech and Schembri escapes scrutiny. Quite the opposite. The trial has placed under the microscope the proximity between big business, political power, regulators, senior police officers and people connected to organised crime. The larger question is why so many of these relationships were possible in the first place. Why were there so few institu- tional firewalls separating polit- ical decision-making from ma- jor private business interests? That is the part of the Mus- cat-era legacy a murder trial cannot resolve. It requires po- litical reckoning and an effort to create the missing firewalls— stronger rules on lobbying, gifts, political access, meetings and communications with major business interests, clearer re- strictions on informal relation- ships between those controlling public power and those with substantial private financial in- terests. Seven years after Yorgen Fenech's arrest, Robert Abela's government shows little politi- cal will to address these issues. The danger is that without a political reckoning, the system exposed by Daphne's investi- gations and the trial itself will remain largely intact, leaving open the possibility that history could repeat itself, with equally tragic consequences.