‘If I could turn back time’: Fenech challenged over failure to report murder plot

Yorgen Fenech admitted he neither contacted the police nor warned Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family after allegedly learning that a €30,000 deposit had been paid for her murder, as prosecutors continued challenging his version of events.

“If I could turn back time, I’d do many things differently,” Fenech told the jury during his third day of cross-examination.

Fenech stands accused of complicity in Caruana Galizia’s 2017 assassination. He denies the charges and has sought to place responsibility for the murder on former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.

Prosecutor Godwin Cini questioned why Fenech, despite his extensive political and police contacts, failed to report what he allegedly knew.

Fenech claimed he did not approach the authorities because he believed Schembri was behind the plot. Asked whether he considered Schembri the mastermind, Fenech replied: “I have no doubt.”

The prosecution confronted Fenech with his claim that he paid middleman Melvin Theuma €50,000 after being told that €30,000 had already been handed over as a deposit for the murder.

Cini suggested the additional €20,000 amounted to a “tip”. Fenech insisted he made the payment because he wanted to stop the murder and was being blackmailed.

The prosecutor argued that Fenech had numerous alternatives but had chosen the worst possible course of action. He also noted that Fenech was never heard confronting Theuma about the €50,000 in the secretly recorded conversations presented in court.

Fenech also acknowledged paying Theuma between €400,000 and €450,000 following the murder, maintaining that the payments resulted from blackmail and did not indicate his involvement.

The court also heard about money Schembri allegedly handed Fenech in a Reebok bag. Fenech said it contained between €75,000 and €80,000, of which €60,000 was passed to Theuma following demands linked to the Degiorgio brothers’ possible bail.

Fenech accepted that he had placed himself between Schembri and Theuma but insisted this happened after the murder.

“That’s what I should have done,” he said when asked why he had not told Schembri to deal with Theuma directly and never speak to him again about the murder of a mother.

Questioning later turned to 17 Black, Fenech’s secret Dubai company, and Caruana Galizia’s reporting about it before her assassination.

Prosecutors suggested her reporting was exposing Fenech and provided a motive for the murder. Fenech denied this, insisting that 17 Black had no connection to the Electrogas power station project.

Jurors were shown a WhatsApp exchange between Fenech and MaltaToday owner Saviour Balzan concerning an article mentioning 17 Black.

“Couldn’t they have avoided 17 Black and published a decent photo?” Fenech wrote.

Balzan told him that he had reprimanded the journalist responsible and that changes had been made to the article. The two also discussed meeting at Fenech’s office the following day.

In court, Fenech insisted he was only bothered by the photograph used with the article, not its reference to 17 Black.

He also acknowledged telling Theuma, “I’ll throw her down from here, and I won’t regret it,” but dismissed the threat against Caruana Galizia as “a comment in poor taste”.

Fenech insisted he only learnt through media reports that 17 Black had been identified as a target client of offshore companies owned by Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi.