Panama Papers scribe killed in Malta car blast

A journalist who led the Panama Papers probe into offshore tax havens and corruption in Malta was killed on Monday in a car bomb near her residence. Such was the impact that the wreckage of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s car was sent spiralling over a wall and into a field.

A blogger whose posts often attracted more readers than the combined circulation of the country's newspapers, Caruana Galizia was recently described by the American news outlet Politico as a "one-woman WikiLeaks".

In her latest revelations, she had made accusations against Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and two of his closest aides, connecting offshore companies linked to the three men with the sale of Maltese passports.

In a statement, PM Muscat condemned the "barbaric attack". "Everyone knows Caruana Galizia was a harsh critic of mine," he said, adding that it also amounted to an assault on freedom of expression.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack. He announced in Parliament later on Monday that Federal Bureau of Investigation officers were on their way to Malta to assist with the investigation, following his request for help

from the US government. According to local media reports, Caruana Galizia had filed a police report 15 days ago to say that she had been receiving death threats.

Over the last two years, her reporting had largely focused on revelations from the Panama Papers, a cache of 11.5 million documents leaked from the internal database of the world's fourth largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca.

Caruana is survived by her husband and three sons. One son, Matthew, was on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its work on the Panama Papers scandal.