• Live
    • Audio Only
  • google plus
  • facebook
  • twitter
News > World

Car Bomb Kills Maltese Journalist Who Used Panama Papers to Exposed Corrupt Officials

  • She was a crusader against the

    She was a crusader against the "cronyism" culture of her country and ineffecacy of government's resolution to solve corruption cases. | Photo: Reuters

Published 16 October 2017
Opinion

The 53-year-old journalist wrote scathing news reports about the Malta government's inability to punish corrupt officials.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist from the island of Malta known for exposing corrupt officials in offshore tax havens was killed in a car bomb Monday.   

RELATED:
Body Found of 12th Journalist Killed This Year in Mexico

Police said the bomb exploded Monday afternoon when she was driving through the village of Bidnija in northern Malta. 

The 53-year-old journalist wrote scathing news reports in her widely-read blog, "Running Commentary," about the Malta government's opaqueness and inability to punish corrupt officials.

According to the Times of Malta, Caruana Galizia had filed a police report about two weeks ago stating she had received threats.  

Gerard Ryle, the director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the organization behind  the Panama Papers investigation, said, it was "deeply concerned  about freedom of the press in Malta” and urged the authorities to investigate the killing.

Maltese Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat condemned her murder, calling it a "barbaric attack on press freedom."  

"I will not rest until I see justice done in this case. Our country deserves justice," he said in a televised statement. 

"Everyone is aware that Ms. Caruana Galizia was one of my harshest critics, politically and personally, as she was for others too. However, I can never use, in any way, this fact to justify, in any possible way, this barbaric act that goes against civilization and all dignity," he said in a statement.

Last year, Caruana Galizia reported that the then Energy Minister, Konrad Mizzi, and Keith Schembri, Muscat’s chief of staff were implicated in Panama Papers as heads of two offshore companies. 

"Mr Schembri is claiming that he is not corrupt, despite moving to set up a secret company in Panama along with favourite minister Konrad Mizzi and Mr Egrant just days after Labour won the general election in 2013, sheltering it in a top-secret trust in New Zealand, then hunting round the world for a shady bank that would take them as clients," she wrote in one of her blog post.

Concerned over her island country's fate, she was a staunch supporter of EU. 

Earlier this year, Politico magazine called her "the blogging fury" and "one-woman WikiLeaks," and included her in a list of influencers with 28 men and women who were responsible for "making and shaking Europe."

Many officials took to Twitter denouncing the journalist's death. 

"If journalists are silenced, our freedom is lost," Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission said. 

The leader of the opposition, Adrian Delia, said the event marked "the collapse of democracy and freedom of expression."

Hours before she was killed, Caruana Galizia, lamenting government's inaction on the corruption cases she worked on, she wrote, "there are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate."

Comment
0
Comments
Post with no comments.