An absolutely stunning story, and it's just the proverbial tip of a large iceberg.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/murder-in-malta/
After a journalist was assassinated, her sons found clues in her unfinished work that cracked the case and brought down the government. Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, is implicated in an assassination of the journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia. Also implicated are Keith Schembri, Muscat’s chief of staff, and Konrad Mizzi, Muscat’s energy minister. A Maltese accountant had begun setting up shell companies in Panama five days after Muscat won election to Prime Minister.
It appears that the assassination is related to a corruption racket involving Electrogas, a consortium behind Muscat’s power-station project. By the beginning of 2017, Electrogas had burned through a six-hundred-million-euro loan from the Maltese state. "Daphne had felt for years that the power station made no sense. The previous government had approved the construction of an undersea cable to Sicily, which now connected Malta directly to the European power grid. Muscat’s power station, she thought, was superfluous, costly, and unreliable—and was likely set up as a kind of cover for distributing taxpayer funds to political allies and friends."
Problems with the power plant were revealed when "a ship’s anchor dropped to the seafloor knocking the cable that brings electricity from Sicily. For the first time, Muscat’s new power station was required to power the whole country. Shop lights and street lamps flickered, then went out."
Matthew, Daphne's eldest son, shared a Pulitzer Prize for the
Panama Papers leak. In early 2016, Matthew was living in Berlin, working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which broke the story about the Panama papers. The I.C.I.J. partnered with more than a hundred journalists from eighty countries to sort through the information.
Investigators found "trusts in New Zealand, companies in the British Virgin Islands, projects in Montenegro, secret accounts in Shanghai and Dubai belonging to members of the Maltese élite. A third shell company, Egrant, was established at the same time as those owned by the men in Muscat’s Cabinet. But the accountant had taken special care to hide the identity of Egrant’s owner."
"A whistle-blower from a bank told Daphne that Egrant belonged to Muscat’s wife, Michelle. Soon afterward, the whistle-blower fled to Greece. The lead investigator at Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit told his bosses that he could find out who owned Egrant within seventy-two hours, if he was given access to the right tax returns, bank statements, and Labour Party files. The next morning, he was fired."
https://lovinmalta.com/opinion/anal...rant-the-company-on-everyones-lips-this-week/
https://theshiftnews.com/2019/06/03/faulty-wiring-konrad-mizzis-sinister-electrogas-deal/
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/v...as-leak-months-prior-to-daphnes-murder.838994
https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/..._galizia_pushed_muscat_into_an_early_electionCurrent Malta Prime Minister is Robert Abela. He has is own scandal.
https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/...goahead_to_unlock_tax_chiefs_government_phone
