Plotting a murder in a potato shed; tens of thousands of euros handed over in a brown envelope. The trial of Yorgen Fenech, the 44-year-old heir to a Maltese property empire, is full of details about how the car-bomb murder of the anti-corruption journalist Caruana Galizia was conceived and carried out. The start of proceedings this week in a Valletta courtroom is a development many feared would never happen, after many delays and legal challenges.
Fenech was arrested in 2019 on his yacht as he presumably tried to escape Malta after being connected with the killing that had happened two years earlier.
He is named in the indictment as the instigator of the plot, facing charges of complicity in homicide and criminal association with the perpetrators as the last of seven men to face trial over the assassination that rocked the country.
The attorney general is calling for a life sentence on the murder charge and up to 30 years for the criminal association charge. Fenech rejects the charges.
Last-minute maneuver
