---
title: "Malta businessman goes on trial over journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder"
description: "Yorgen Fenech, a prominent Maltese businessman, has gone on trial accused of complicity in the 2017 car-bomb assassination of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia — a killing that shook Malta and Europe. He denies the charges."
category: "World"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/world
author: "Sofia Russo"
published: 2026-07-02T07:14:00.000Z
updated: 2026-07-02T07:14:00.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/malta-businessman-goes-on-trial-over-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia-s-murder
tags: ["malta", "press-freedom", "daphne-caruana-galizia", "trial", "justice"]
---
# Malta businessman goes on trial over journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder

Yorgen Fenech, a prominent Maltese businessman, has gone on trial accused of complicity in the 2017 car-bomb assassination of the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia — a killing that shook Malta and Europe. He denies the charges.

Nearly nine years after a car bomb killed one of Malta's most prominent journalists, the man accused of ordering her death has gone on trial — a long-awaited moment in a case that has weighed on the small Mediterranean nation for years.

## The trial

Yorgen Fenech, a 44-year-old businessman, pleaded not guilty this week as his jury trial opened at the Criminal Court in Valletta, [Reporters Without Borders reported](https://rsf.org/en/malta-trial-opens-alleged-mastermind-behind-assassination-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia). He is charged with complicity in the murder and with criminal association, and faces a possible life sentence if convicted. Fenech denies the allegations and is presumed innocent; the proceedings are expected to last several weeks.

## The killing

Daphne Caruana Galizia, one of Malta's best-known investigative reporters, was killed on October 16, 2017, when a bomb hidden in her car detonated shortly after she left her home in the village of Bidnija. She had spent years reporting on allegations of corruption reaching into Malta's political and business elite, [as Al Jazeera noted](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/2/businessman-on-trial-in-malta-over-prominent-journalists-murder). At the time of her death she had been examining an offshore company called 17 Black, which prosecutors say was linked to Fenech.

Her assassination sent shock waves across Europe and became a symbol, for press-freedom groups, of the dangers faced by journalists who investigate the powerful.

## What prosecutors allege

Prosecutors say Fenech commissioned the killing through a middleman, a former taxi driver named Melvin Theuma, who has admitted his own role and was granted a pardon in exchange for testifying — making him a central witness. Several other men have already been dealt with by the courts: the two who admitted planting and detonating the bomb are serving long prison terms, and others were convicted over supplying the device. Fenech was arrested in 2019; prosecutors said at the time that he was stopped as he tried to leave the island by boat. He has maintained his innocence throughout.

## A political earthquake

The murder triggered a prolonged political crisis. Mass protests and a wave of resignations followed, and Malta's prime minister at the time, Joseph Muscat, stepped down in early 2020 amid the fallout; he has not been charged in connection with the killing. A public inquiry later concluded that the state bore a share of responsibility, finding it had fostered a climate of impunity around the journalist's work.

## Why it matters

For Malta, the trial is a test of whether its justice system can hold to account those accused at the top of the alleged plot, not only the men who carried out the bombing. For the wider community of journalists and the organizations that defend them, it is being watched as a measure of whether the killing of a reporter can end in full accountability. The outcome now rests with the court — and, whatever the verdict, the case has already reshaped Malta's politics and its reckoning with corruption and the rule of law.

## Sources

- [Businessman on trial in Malta over prominent journalist's murder](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/2/businessman-on-trial-in-malta-over-prominent-journalists-murder)
- [Malta: Trial opens for alleged mastermind behind assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia](https://rsf.org/en/malta-trial-opens-alleged-mastermind-behind-assassination-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia)