‘I never asked’: money and secrets in Malta’s underworld

Two witnesses testifying in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder trial on Friday morning offered a glimpse into the way money, favours and instructions appear to move through Malta’s criminal underworld: through trusted intermediaries, deliberate silence, and a carefully maintained lack of curiosity.

Lawrence Pace, known as il-Lolly, told jurors that pardoned middleman Melvin Theuma had asked him to pass money to the families of Alfred and George Degiorgio and Vince Muscat while the three men were in prison over their role in executing Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

Pace said he knew Theuma from Marsa and Ħamrun, including from a shop owned by an individual known as Ta’ Rafel tal-Gass. He also knew Muscat, Alfred Degiorgio and George Degiorgio from Marsa.

Asked how Theuma came into the picture, Pace said he was at Ta’ Rafel when Theuma spoke to him about sending €100 each to the three men. The money was to be passed to their family members, who would then give it to them.

“I don’t know why he wanted to give them the money. I just went three times to give this money,” Pace told the court.

When prosecutor Godwin Cini asked whether Theuma had told him what the money was for, Pace replied: “No, no, I never asked. I had no interest in knowing.”

Pace said the money was routed through Joseph Brincat, who owned a shop known as Marsa White Stars and was personally acquainted with the Degiorgio family. Brincat would then pass the money to Mario Degiorgio, the brothers’ sibling, who would return a receipt from prison to show the money had changed hands.

Pace described a similar errand involving Muscat before the murder. He said Muscat once drove him to Siġġiewi, gave him money in a small envelope, and instructed him to hand it to an unknown man who pulled up in a car.

“I didn’t know what the money was for,” Pace said, adding that Muscat told him nothing about the purpose of the exchange.

Brincat’s testimony followed the same pattern.

Asked whether he knew why Pace wanted to pass money to the Degiorgios and Muscat, Brincat said: “No, I had no idea, and I had no interest in it.”

He said Pace gave him the money, he contacted Mario Degiorgio, and Mario later returned with a receipt from Kordin. Brincat said he stopped helping once the receipts stopped arriving.

“I never asked, and he never told me. I wasn’t interested in any of this,” Brincat told the court.

The testimony came in the trial by jury against Yorgen Fenech, who stands charged with complicity in Caruana Galizia’s voluntary homicide and criminal association.

Fenech denies the charges.

While Pace and Brincat were not testifying as participants in the murder plot, their evidence echoed a broader pattern that has emerged from witnesses who were directly involved in the assassination.

Muscat, who is serving a 15-year sentence for his role in the murder, repeatedly told the court that he avoided asking questions about who was behind instructions, payments or information.

When asked in previous sittings how Theuma knew where Caruana Galizia could be found in Naxxar, Muscat said he did not know and did not ask Alfred Degiorgio. He said all he needed was the information.

Muscat also testified that he had dropped Alfred Degiorgio off at Castille two or three times without knowing who he was meeting.

“I don’t like asking questions about these things,” Muscat told the court in earlier testimony.

The same logic appeared when Muscat spoke about the alleged urgency behind the order to kill Caruana Galizia. Asked what he knew about why the murder had to be carried out quickly, he said: “I knew nothing. I don’t like asking. I wasn’t interested in knowing this information.”

George Degiorgio, who was convicted of the murder together with his brother Alfred, used similar phrasing when questioned about items and money allegedly passed to the brothers while in prison.

“I don’t know what he used to give us. We would just get the items, but we wouldn’t know where they came from,” Degiorgio said.

He also sarcastically said money used by the brothers “came from the sky”. The repeated formula running through these testimonies is not simply ignorance: it is a form of compartmentalisation.

One person passes money. Another provides a receipt. A third gives a lift. Someone else delivers information. Each link in the chain claims to know only the instruction immediately in front of him, while avoiding questions about the source, purpose or person behind it.

The trial continues on Friday afternoon.