The Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat must have been surprised when Keith Schembri, his Chief of Staff resigned on early Tuesday morning. His resignation was on the heels of reports from the local media that rocked the government.
According to Casino, some arrests were made last week and a very rich casino operator was part of this arrest. The arrests were in connection with the cold blooded murder of a popular journalist. It was said that the journalist had some dirt against him before she was murdered.
The CEO of Tumas Group, Jorgen Fenech was immediately arrested after he tendered his resignation letter on Wednesday. The Tumas Group is presently the only operator in Malta with a number of casinos. As at this time, they run three properties. They have been able to achieve this through their viable subsidiary Tumas Gaming.
According to reports from the police which was released on Saturday, Fenech has agreed to disclose all he knows about the murder. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a prominent journalist that was killed in 2017 by a car bomb attack.
‘Middleman’ Pardoned
In the meantime, Melvin Theuma, who is considered to be the middleman in the infamous case, has gotten the assurance he needed. He was assured that he’ll be getting a presidential pardon should his evidence prove to be true. This is according to what a police source disclosed to Reuters.
What we cannot ascertain is what Theuma told the police when he was held up last week. But from the look of things, the information he must have given must have helped the police arrest Fenech one way or the other.
According to Reuters, the middleman, Theuma was detained on the 14th of November as part of a money-laundering case that’s unrelated to the murder. When he was grilled, he offered to say all he knew about the murder of the journalist. In exchange for the information, he wanted immunity.
Theuma is a taxi driver who had worked at an apartment complex regularly. This complex was reportedly owned by Fenech. Theuma is no saint as he’s been previously convicted of running a euro lottery scam which ran into millions. He was also a loan shark.
Dirty Dealings
Before her untimely demise, Galizia was a non-relenting journalist and her career was devoted to exposing corruption that was happening at the highest offices in Malta. A government officials she accused of corruption were Schembri. The other big name official is the minister for tourism Konrad Mizzi. He was the former energy secretary before he was appointed to head the new office.
The first place politicians consider when they want to stash stolen funds is none other than the offshore tax haven, Panama.
When Reuters conducted an independent investigation last November, they discovered an important link. A fictitious offshore company that was under the spotlight of Galizia known as 17 Black, was controlled by Fenech.
To further prove this suspicions right, some leaked emails released in 2015 showed that the company was about to make a payment of $2 million to some other companies based in Panama. These companies were owned by Schembri and Mizzi
In 2013, a company owned by Fenech, Electrogas, was awarded a contract of $500 million to build a power station in Malta. The project was conceived by Mizzi and it was also promoted by him. On Tuesday, Mizzi submitted his resignation letter.
Brothers, Alfred and George Degiorgio and their accomplice Vince Muscat were arrested for carrying out the December 2017 car bomb attack. So far, they haven’t been able to find out who ordered the killing of the journalist.
