Greylisting Malta and Daphne’s murder: where is the connection? Oil smuggling?

David Thake has written a blog stating that Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination and Yorgen Fenech are, in part, responsible for the fact that Malta has been grey-listed. In some measure, this is true. The three countries responsible for grey-listing Malta are Great Britain, USA, and Germany.

Let’s start with Great Britain. I don’t think that Great Britain has a vested interest in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. As far as I can see, Boris Johnson has never been benevolent towards Malta. While mayor of London, he was famous for his comment regarding the London bendy buses that had been sent to Malta. As prime minister, he has ignored Malta’s efforts regarding the pandemic and Malta has not been included in the UK’s green list. Therefore, the UK’s decision to support the grey-listing of Malta comes as no surprise. We then have the USA and Germany. These two countries do have a vested interest in Daphne’s murder. And perhaps, it is because of these two countries direct vested interest that UK has supported them.

We now know that Daphne Caruana Galizia’s computer was sent to Germany. And it is clear now that Germany was not chosen by the family arbitrarily. Germany is one of the European jurisdictions that can permit a family to delete data from computers in a legal way. One needs to remember that her husband is a lawyer. Thus, according to German Law, there was no problem for this data to be deleted, despite the fact that it belonged to a journalist who had been brutally assassinated as long as the family made a formal request. I don’t think that there is any other jurisdiction that permits such an action.

There can be no doubt that Daphne’s computer contained information related to her investigative work. And probably there is information that can directly implicate members of her family in her murder. These two stories have converged.

When Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered the first reaction was that she had been killed because she was investigating the smuggling of oil. This trail has not yet been thoroughly followed up. I can reveal that Daphne started investigating oil smuggling after what had happened in the Mediterranean when Russian warships, were refused to be refuelled by the Maltese authorities. It was the bold decision of the then, George Vella, who categorically refused that these warships would be refuelled.

It seems that Daphne Caruana Galizia was tipped off that these Russian warships were still refuelled through Malta with the help of oil smugglers who were based here. This was done behind the backs of the then Foreign Minister George Vella. The oil smugglers used their barges for such operations but most important, they had the protection of powerful individuals.

If this is true or not, it needs confirmation. The answer is on her computer. If this is true, this episode must have definitely angered the Americans and Germany. What can be said with certainty is that this event happened in 2016. From that moment onwards, Joseph Muscat started to lose his aura with the Americans. He won the elections but then lost his bid to become the president of the European Union. Then, Daphne was assassinated. Different forces converged into her assassination story. What can be confirmed that individuals, who are known to be or had been in the oil business had their name mentioned in court during the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech. What is definite is that there is some sort of a veiled political reprimand behind this decision. One journalist mentioned the fact that the US’s decision to vote in favour of blacklisting Malta is to be linked to Stewards. I am more than convinced that America’s anger against Malta is linked to this story of the alleged refuelling of Russian warships by Maltese oil smugglers. The Caruana Galizia family has only to confirm this.  Yorgen Fenech is just a casualty; a scapegoat, to hide the networking of international crime that is so strong as to hold the Caruana Galizias to ransom.