Maltese muckraker was headline machine, corruption fighter
BIDNIJA, Malta — A few hundred meters from the home of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, in the field where the flaming wreckage of her car landed after being blown off the road by an assassin’s bomb, a plastic pen is stuck into the ground near a Maltese flag.
A handwritten note among bunches of flowers nearby reads: “What you wrote and what you uncovered cannot be blown away.”
Grief and anger are still palpable in this tiny Mediterranean nation, where Caruana Galizia’s website, “Running Commentary,” was essential reading in cafes, corridors of power, boardrooms and newsrooms.
There have been six car bombings in Malta over the past two years, including hers. None has been solved.
Fed by a network of sources who tipped her off about stories, Caruana Galizia turned into a headline machine that could set the nation’s news agenda on any given day.
Her sons, in a Facebook post after her Oct. 16 death, took up where she left off, calling on Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to resign “for watching over the birth of a society dominated by fear, mistrust, crime and corruption.”
Caruana Galizia also followed up on the Panama Papers offshore accounts leaks in 2016. She alleged this year that documents provided by a whistleblower showed that the wife of Muscat had an offshore holding in Panama to receive money from Azerbaijan. Muscat and his wife, Michelle, denied the allegations.
When protesters camped out outside Muscat’s office in the capital, Valletta, to show support for the slain journalist and call for the resignations of the country’s police chief and attorney general, the sons sent them pizza.
Her supporters are hoping the outrage generated by the killing will spark change that could help this nation shrug off its reputation as a haven for money laundering.