Prominent Maltese businessman Jorgen Fenech will stand trial for the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after he was indicted on Wednesday.
This was reported by European Pravda, citing the Times of Malta.
Fenech is charged with accessory to murder and criminal conspiracy. The prosecutor’s office is seeking a life sentence on the first count and an additional 20 to 30 years in prison on the second.
In asking the court to deny Fenek bail, prosecutors said the businessman bought grenades, poison, machine guns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition online in November 2018.
The purchases were made in the same month that it became known that Fenech was the owner of a company called 17 Black, which Caruana Galizia wrote about and which Maltese financial regulators say was the source of funds for companies set up in Panama by the then energy minister and chief of staff to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
The decision to proceed to trial ended a lawsuit that began in November 2019 when Fenech was arrested aboard his luxury yacht. The yacht was leaving Maltese harbor at dawn the day after Muscat offered clemency to a man who claimed to know the mastermind behind Caruana Galizia’s murder.
In February of this year, Vincent Muscat, unrelated to the former prime minister, became the first person convicted of murder. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Two brothers, George and Alfred Degiorgio, also accused of involvement in the murder, petitioned the president for clemency.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had been investigating corruption crimes as part of the Panama Papers, was killed in a car bombing on Oct. 16, 2017, in Malta.
