Panama Papers journalist killed by car bomb

A MALTESE investigative journalist who exposed the island nation’s links to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers has been killed as a bomb exploded in her car.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, had just driven away from her home in Mosta, a large town on Malta’s main island, when the bomb went off, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

He acknowledged she was “one of my harshest critics, on a political and personal level”, but denounced the “barbaric attack” as “unacceptable” violence that also assaulted freedom of expression.

One of the topics the veteran reporter examined was what the documents from the 2016 leak said about Malta.

She wrote that Mr Muscat’s wife, the country’s energy minister and the government’s chief-of-staff had offshore holdings in Panama to receive money from Azerbaijan.

Mr Muscat and his wife, Michelle, denied having companies in Panama.

Ms Caruana Galizia filed a police report two weeks ago saying she was receiving threats, police told Maltese news outlets on Monday.

She had been a regular columnist for the Malta Independent, writing twice weekly for the newspaper since 1996. She also wrote a blog called Running Commentary, which was followed by many in Malta.

Half an hour before she was killed, she posted to her website an item about a libel claim the Prime Minister’s chief of staff had brought against a former opposition figure over comments the latter made about corruption.

Ms Caruana Galizia had been sued for libel over articles she wrote for her blog.