Maltese blogger assassinated by car bomb

[Firestarter]

On 16 October, the Maltese internet blogger and journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, was executed by a car bomb – silenced forever.
Caruana was amongst others involved in the Panama papers investigation.

Some of Caruana’s recent revelations accused Malta’s Prime Minister since 2013, Joseph Muscat, and 2 of his closest aides, for using offshore companies to receive payments from the government of Azerbaijan for the sale of Maltese passports.
Muscat went to the polls a year early after his wife was implicated in the scandal. He has denied that his family uses secret offshore bank accounts to stash kickbacks.
To make sure that the police investigation doesn’t point fingers in the “wrong” direction, Muscat asked for “help from the US government” and “FBI officers were on their way to Malta to assist with the investigation”: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ers-journalist


Not long after Labour swept to power in 2013, Muscat’s chief of staff Keith Schembri and former Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi, tried to set up offshore trusts in New Zealand and companies in Panama.
Schembri, accepted bribes from the sale of Maltese passports to wealthy Russians, with the money routed through offshore accounts.

Muscat’s wife, Michelle Muscat, owns Egrant Inc (located in Panama) that received a series of payments, called “loans”. The largest payment, for $1.017 million, was made in March 2016. They came from an account at Pilatus bank belonging to Al Sahra FZCO. The owner of Al Sahra is the daughter of Azerbaijan’s leader, Ilham Aliyev: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ruption-claims

The $1.017 million payment, was made from Al Sahra’s account at Pilatus Bank in Malta, to an account of Egrant Inc at a bank in Dubai.
This was not the only “loan payment” which Egrant Inc received from Al Sahra FZCO. Other “loan payments” of around $100,000 each were made in January, February and March 2016: https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/201...ny-egrant-inc/


I looked through the titles of the stories on her blog till the end of August, and found that a lot of her articles take aim at the Maltese politician Adrian Delia: https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/


I found the following the most interesting, maybe because Caruana sarcastically attacks her fellow deaf, dumb and blind journalists.
Adrian Delia and his wife are personally liable for a “loan” of €7.2 million provided by the money laundering HSBC bank.
As a result of this deal, Delia requires HSBC’s permission to sell his shares in the company. The effect is that HSBC Malta can object to all movements of assets by Delia and his wife. In other words, through this “loan” they have made Delia into a puppet: https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/201...ion-debt-hsbc/
(archived here: http://archive.fo/8EORQ)

See a page from the “deed of constitution of debt” document, which shows that Delia is indebted to HSBC.

[Raginfridus]

http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires...icle-1.3580706

Police removed a banner describing Malta as a "Mafia state."

[timosman]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42221352

Police in Malta have arrested 10 Maltese nationals in connection with the car bomb murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told reporters that police operations were under way in the town of Marsa, and the Bugibba and Zebbug areas.

Caruana Galizia was killed close to her home on 16 October in an attack which shocked the country.

The 53-year-old was known for her blog accusing top politicians of corruption.

The government offered a €1m (£890,000; $1.2m) reward for information about her murder.

International experts, including from the FBI, were called in to help in the investigation.

Police and troops are being used in the security operation, with roads blocked and a patrol boat deployed.


...

[Firestarter]

I´m glad that the prime suspects for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Joseph Muscat and Adrian Delia, aren´t under investigation.
I wouldn’t want the people in Malta to lose faith in “democracy”…

It wasn’t only the FBI that helped Malta with the “investigation”, but also the Dutch intelligence agencies.
Prime Minister Muscat announced that the 10 Maltese nationals that were arrested for the car bomb murder are all known to the police, while some of them have prior criminal records.
Maltatoday reported that they are “prominent figures in the local crime scene”.

The police have 48 hours to interrogate them before deciding whether to prosecute them or set them free: http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/na...4#.WiZ6XdLibct

[Swordsmyth]

I´m glad that the prime suspects for the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Joseph Muscat and Adrian Delia, aren´t under investigation.
I wouldn’t want the people in Malta to lose faith in “democracy”…

It wasn’t only the FBI that helped Malta with the “investigation”, but also the Dutch intelligence agencies.
Prime Minister Muscat announced that the 10 Maltese nationals that were arrested for the car bomb murder are all known to the police, while some of them have prior criminal records.
Maltatoday reported that they are “prominent figures in the local crime scene”.

The police have 48 hours to interrogate them before deciding whether to prosecute them or set them free: http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/na...4#.WiZ6XdLibct

[Firestarter]

Caruana Galizia was murdered in October 2017. In August 2017, Russian former bank employee Maria Efimova fled Malta for Greece in fear of her life.
Galizia had named her as the source for the information that the Maltese Prime Minister's wife, Michelle Muscat, received €1 million ($1.2 million) from Azerbaijan's ruling family, the Aliyevs, via Egrant Inc, a secret offshore firm in Panama. Prime Minister Muscat and his wife Michelle have denied these allegations.

Authorities in Malta and Cyprus issued arrest warrants for Efimova.
The Maltese warrant is based on the accusation by her former employer Pilatus Bank that she stole. The Cypriot warrant also accused her of embezzlement of her former employer Fragrance Distribution. Efimova denies both allegations.

In March 2018, Efimova handed herself in to Greek police.
The Greek court denied Malta's request for her extradition.
Judges said the charges against Efimova were vague.

In December, the cops arrested 10 Maltese nationals for the murder; 3 of them were charged: https://www.dw.com/en/greece-refuses...der/a-43365224


Several people complained that police are not following leads to discover the identity of those who ordered the car bombing that killed Caruana Galizia.
Officers haven’t “fully investigated” the witnesses who saw Malta’s minister of economy Chris Cardona and his aide Joseph Gerada drinking with one of 3 suspects.
Cardona sued Caruana Galizia for defamation over her claims that he had visited a brothel in Germany.
Cardona has said that he only knew the suspects through his work as a criminal lawyer.

Magistrate Vella, who was in charge of the murder “investigation”, was offered a promotion to become a judge and would leave the case. Many see this as a way to delay and stall the investigation: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/crime...iry/ar-AAyA1X4
(archived here: http://archive.is/9EgfR)


The husband of the murdered journalist, Peter Caruana Galizia, believes members of Malta’s government are interfering in the “investigation” into her murder.
The 3 men awaiting trial for the murder (brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio and Vincent Muscat) are “simply contractors” and the mastermind behind the attack will probably never be brought to justice.

It is clear to us that the three men arraigned so far are simply contractors commissioned by a third party.
My sons and I are not convinced that our government really wants to establish who sent them, for fear such persons are in fact very close to our government.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8309666.html


In June, the Maltese Court ruled that Deputy Commissioner of Police, Silvio Valletta, should not be involved in the investigation into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia because of a possible conflict of interest.

Valletta was a board member in the Government agency for money laundering (FIAU) and married to Minister for Gozo, Justyne Caruana.
Both Valletta and his wife Caruana, were harshly criticised by the murdered journalist: https://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/...ioner/?lang=en

[Firestarter]

Daphne Caruana Galizia repeatedly exposed the passports for money scheme by Henley and Partners that was chaired by the Swiss lawyer Christian Kalin and Kalin’s shady connections to Keith Schembri and PM Joseph Muscat.
See Christian Kalin (right) with Joseph Muscat (left) and Keith Schembri (centre background).


Daphne Caruana Galizia was repeatedly harassed with defamation law suits to remove this information from her blogspot.
When I first tried to look for more information on this interesting link: Google.nl refused to handle my search request (with an error message noting that “suspicious” activity was observed on my computer). Duckduckgo.com had some difficulty finding the most interesting stories…

Galizia was sued for defamation in London by the notorious law firm Mishcon de Reya for Henley and Partners. She had evidence that Christian Kalin had discussed this ploy with PM of Malta Joseph Muscat and his chief of staff Keith Schembri (see the mail).

https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/201...-joseph-order/
(archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20180508145028/https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2017/05/prime-minister-chief-staff-use-josephmuscat-com-addresses-deal-secretly-henley-partners-chairman-addresses-keith-joseph-order/)


Nine days after Galizia was murdered, Joseph Muscat was at a conference in Dubai, organised by Henley and Partners: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8saMesU74M


British Labour MP Ben Bradshaw has exposed that Daphne Caruana Galizia was investigating the links between Cambridge Analytica and Henley and Partners.
Other links are through the Legatum Institute.
This could have been THE motive for silencing her forever.

Legatum’s founder Christopher Chandler and Mark Stoleson, CEO of the Legatum Group, opened accounts at Pilatus Bank for buying a Maltese passport.
About 10 years ago chairman of Henley and Partners, Christian Kalin, struck up a relationship with former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix. Nix and Kalin collaborated in a number of electoral campaigns in the Caribbean.
At St Vincent and the Grenadines, Kalin supported leader of the opposition Arnhim Eustace. Kalin listed various investments that Eustace could count on if he won the election (in exchange for the right to sell passports): http://theshiftnews.com/2018/03/28/b...dge-analytica/


Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes said that according to Christopher Wylie - Henley and Partners and the political consulting firm SCL Group (Cambridge Analytica) were linked: http://theshiftnews.com/2018/06/06/w...analytica-mep/


In the following video Alexander Nix is questioned on his relationship with Christian Kalin.
Nix says he met him on numerous occasions; they had the same clients. Kalin had an interest in the government.
They discussed election campaigns. They also discussed the financing of the campaigns. Kalin may have made contributions to election campaigns.
It was years ago that they last spoke in Saint Kitts.



Sven Hughes has told about his experiences while working for SCL.
In the Eastern Caribbean, SCL was manipulating the elections in at least 6 countries. One objective appears to get governments set up that would allow the lucrative trade in passports (by Henley and other similar companies).
Passports from a “respectable” country are a valuable possession for the elite, money laundering criminals. It’s estimated that the elite spend over $2 billion on “citizenship by investment” (CIU).
In at least 5 Caribbean nations, SCL’s campaigns were backed by Christian H. Kalin, CEO of Henley.

Well before the 2010 campaign in Saint Kitts, Henley and Partners worked with Denzil Douglas to sell passports for the bargain price of $150,000. Starting in 2009, such citizenships allow visa-free travel to over 100 countries, including the UK, the European Schengen zone. By 2014, passports had become Saint Kitts’s biggest export, with the revenue estimated at 25% of GDP.
Neighbouring islands and over 30 countries around the world have started similar “citizenship by investment” programs. In Dominica, a similar passport can now be bought for $100,000.
The US has a related investment scheme, the EB-5visa, which Jared Kushner was using to attract $500,000 investments from China.

Convicted felons Paul Bilzerian and Roger Ver now use Saint Kitts passports.
Many of the passport buyers are from “unpopular” countries, like Iran, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
In 2014, the US Treasury noted that “Iranian nationals” are trying to evade sanctions by using Saint Kitts’s passports.

Shortly before the 2010 election in Saint Kitts, Nix was introduced to Kalin. Nix would become Cambridge Analytica’s founding CEO in 2012.
Prime minister of Saint Kitts, Timothy Harris, encountered SCL’s work in 2015, when he was running for office against Denzil Douglas on a pledge to reform the country’s passport program. Henley and Partners was dismissed as Saint Kitts’ main passport seller. In 2014, Henley also lost its position as the primary Dominica’s passports seller.

Henley’s place as the primary seller of Dominica and Saint Kitts passports was taken by another London-based firm CS Global Partners. The head of Dominica’s CIU program announced that there had been between 1,500 and 2,000 investor passport applications in the country of 50,000 people - 1,200 in only 5 months.
CS Global was founded and led by a former attorney at Henley and Partners. Reportedly it was financed by the British-Indian Dev Bath, who also hired long-time DC lobbyist and former special counsel to President Bill Clinton Lanny J. Davis, to promote Saint Kitts and Dominica passports.
Long-time associate of Bath, Peter Singh Virdee, was arrested in January 2017 at Heathrow Airport on charges of evading millions of dollars in carbon credit taxes.

SCL launched a “targeted digital attack” against Saint Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, which resulted in “Within three weeks every single reference to him on the first two pages of Google (…) referred to the candidate’s horrific track record of corruption, coercion, rape allegations, and victimization”.
SCL charged $4 million for its work in Saint Vincent that year.

At the time of her murder, Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing dozens of defamation lawsuits, including from Henley and the cofounder of Malta’s Pilatus Bank, Ali Sadr Hasheminejad (son of one of Iran’s richest men).
Hasheminejad has been linked to money laundering with officials in Malta’s prime minister’s inner circle. In 2009, Hasheminejad bought a Saint Kitts passport from Henley. In March, he was arrested by federal agents at an airport in Washington on charges of evading US sanctions against Iran; he had 4 passports with him: https://www.fastcompany.com/40571052...ssport-bonanza
(archived here: http://archive.is/ACPFi)


Stranger still?
Mishcon de Reya was suing Daphne Caruana Galizia to stop her from exposing the links from Henley and Partners to the SCL Group (Cambridge Analytica).
Mishcon de Reya was once the law firm that represented Princess Diana.

The SCL Group was involved in orchestrating Brexit.
After the success of Brexit, none other than Mishcon de Reya started a media campaign that it would be “unlawful” for the PM to trigger art. 50 of the Lisbon Treaty without the approval of Parliament.
This made Brexiteers so furious that they were protesting against Mishcon de Reya (the SCL Group must have thought that this was hilarious!): https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36700350
(archived here: http://archive.is/GWeoi)


For more information on the SCL Group: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...tion-Fake-News

[Firestarter]

The following (long) article was written by a journalist who has actually worked with Daphne Caruana Galizia on the Panama papers.
George Degiorgio triggered the bomb from his boat out on the sea. It isn’t sure who hired Degiorgio for the assassination.

A former SCL operative emailed Christian Kälin in June 2012, about "interesting developments" in Malta:

I can introduce you to the opposition leader, if that helps, he's young, very purposeful and open to international investment, and many say he'll win.

Kälin emailed back "Good idea".
Joseph Muscat became PM in March 2013 after a campaign promising to end corruption and "Malta For All". Within months Muscat announced that Henley and Partners would run a citizenship by investment (CBI) program for Malta, which provided citizenship in the EU. Passports would cost €650,000, with another €150,000 to be invested in government bonds for 5 years, Muscat told at the London launch of the program in October 2013.
After his speech, Kälin introduced Muscat to the Iranian born Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad.

See Maltese PM Joseph Muscat with British PM Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth at the opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, April 2018.


In 2003, Ali Sadr won asylum in the US based on claims he'd been tortured in Iran. In 2009, he lost his staying permit.
Sadr then took a job with his father, Mohammad Sadr Hashemi Nejad (reportedly Iran's richest man). The job involved the family's Stratus Group construction business and a $475 million project in Venezuela.
In 2009, Ali Sadr obtained a St Kitts and Nevis passport by paying $250,000 to the citizenship-by-investment program that was run by Henley and Partners.
In 2010, Sadr used his St Kitts passport to set up companies in Dubai, Turkey and Switzerland, with Swiss bank accounts, and laundered $115 million in Venezuelan payments through them.

In 2014, Ali Sadr also founded the Pilatus Bank in Malta, again using his St Kitts and Nevis passport. In August 2015, he also got a top securities license.
Kälin invited Sadr to his 20th wedding anniversary in Switzerland, while Muscat and Schembri attended Sadr's own wedding in northern Italy in 2015.
Pilatus Bank sued Caruana Galizia in Arizona, where her internet server was based.
On March 20, FBI agents arrested the 38-year-old Iranian born Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad at Washington Dulles International Airport and charged him with breaching US banking sanctions on Iran.

Five days after Muscat's March 2013 election win, Malta advisory firm Nexia BT hired Mossack Fonseca to "set up a Panama company and possibly a trust".
By August Mossack Fonseca had set up several British Virgin Islands companies and 3 Panama companies – Hearnville Inc, which would be turned over to Mizzi in mid-2015; Tillgate Inc which would go to Schembri; and Egrant Inc.
Fourteen offshore companies administered by Nexia BT were identified in the Panama Papers.
Malta's economy was booming: cash from passports was producing 3% of the GDP.

In February 2016, Caruana Galizia started exposing that Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, Muscat's closest lieutenants, had set up unnamed Panama companies linked to New Zealand trusts.
A March 2014 profit-sharing agreement under which Willerby, owned by Brian Tonna, was given half the profits Nexia BT earned from passport sales.
The FIAU discovered that 3 Russians, who applied for citizenship through Nexia BT, paid €166,832 directly into Willerby Trade's Pilatus account. Then Willerby paid a €100,000 kickback to the Pilatus account of Maltese Prime Minister's chief of staff, Keith Schembri.
A fourth FIAU report shows links between Mizzi and Schembri's Panama companies and 17 Black and Macbridge in Dubai – which Caruana Galizia was investigating in April 2016.

In early 2015, Malta signed a controversial $1 billion gas supply contract with Azerbaijan. The FIAU traced $1.6 million into 17 Black's Noor Islamic Bank in Dubai from a Latvian bank. The payment came from a company in the Seychelles owned by an Azerbaijan national.
Pilatus executives blamed Maria Efimova for everything. In November 2016, Efimova shared her story with Caruana Galizia.
Efimova said that in March 2016, $1.016 million was transferred to an Egrant account in Dubai from the Pilatus account of Al Sahra FZCO, a Dubai company belonging to the daughter of president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, Leyla Aliyeva.

According to Efimova, the file for Egrant's Pilatus bank account contained 2 declarations of trust dated 20 August 2015, which said that Egrant's ultimate owner was the wife of Malta's PM, Michelle Muscat: https://www.afr.com/news/politics/wo...0180426-h0zbak
(archived here: http://archive.is/r5UsB)

[Firestarter]

Muscat, Buttigieg - $400,000
In 2003, Michelle Buttigieg set up jewellery company Buttardi with the wife of Malta’s PM, Michelle Muscat (formerly Tanti).
They are still partners in this company located in New York: http://www.buttardi.com/contactus.aspx
(archived here: http://archive.is/t0qOF)

In 2014, Buttigieg was appointed “Malta’s tourism representative” in the US based in New York on a $5000 monthly retainer.

In April 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia reported on her blog that the Pilatus Bank was instructed in March 2016 to immediately open an account for Negarin Sadr Hasheminejad, sister of Pilatus Bank chairman Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, and transfer a $1 million “loan” for her fashion business.
This was immediately followed by the transfer of approximately $400,000 to “a Maltese woman who lives in New York and has a jewellery business called Buttardi” (Michelle Buttigieg).

Recently Maria Efimova told a delegation of members of the Euro Parliament that she wasn’t Caruana Galizia’s original source on the existence of the declaration of trust at Pilatus.
Efimova has also been accused of filing a false complaint against Jonathan Ferris, the cop who had arrested her. Ferris left the police to join the FIAU from which he was fired soon after the June elections. Ferris has since claimed that his investigations on Pilatus Bank were stalled due to political pressure and he requested whistleblower status: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/n...cats_us_friend


Caruana Galizia – Mishcon de Reya, PEN
MaltaToday identified Robert Baker as one of the directors of French company Heritage Asset Holdings, whose ultimate beneficial owners are Tale and Nijat Heydarov, sons of the Azerbaijani minister Kamaladdin Heydarov.
They also listed 18 companies Robert Baker is involved in – 9 of which used a Pilatus bank account. All 18 companies were opened between July 2014 and December 2015 by Frendo Advisory, headed by Malta’s former foreign minister Michael Frendo. Frendo is an agent for Malta’s sale of passports together with his son Luke Frendo. Luke resigned as secretary from 14 of the companies he represented in April 2017, after Daphne Caruana Galizia reported on Henley and Partner’s links to the Pilatus bank.

A financial services expert suggested that the company was structured to achieve beneficial tax rates through profit-shifting – a form of tax avoidance that is not illegal.
One of the 18 companies, Kimberly Holding, in a strange move had borrowed money from an unknown entity at 6% interest, but then passed on that money to its subsidiaries without interest.

The notorious international law firm Mishcon de Reya (HQ London) threatened MaltaToday with legal action in the UK unless it removes the article.
Ironically, Mishcon de Reya’s deputy chairman, Prof. Anthony Julius, sits on the board of trustees of the English PEN, the worldwide writers’ “free speech” association that called for “justice” for Daphne Caruana Galizia and demanded that “Maltese authorities respect and protect freedom of expression, journalists and whistleblowers in line with international standards”.
Caruana Galizia’s sons criticised the English PEN for appointing Julius: https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/n...t#.W9xnjLONxph

Mishcon de Reya not only represented Henley and Partners, but also from 2016 to 2018 both Leave.EU and Arron Banks. In June, for example Mishcon de Reya wrote to the European Parliament’s Brexit spokesman, Guy Verhofstadt, to spread more disinformation on “Russiagate” in connection to Brexit.
Banks was represented by none other than Anthony Julius.
In August, it was reported that Mishcon de Reya stopped representing Leave.EU: https://www.theguardian.com/politics...egal-challenge


Mishcon de Reya – supports tax evasion
Mishcon de Reya has also filed a legal complaint against new British anti-tax evasion measures, arguing that they infringe privacy and data protection rights.
Mishcon de Reya also suggested it might challenge transparency measures introduced in June 2016, when David Cameron was PM, which require UK companies to identify their true owners.

Head of Transparency International Rachel Davies Teka responded:

The UK’s persons of significant control (PSC) register strikes a balance between revealing company ownership information – making it harder for corrupt individuals to hide behind UK firms – and retaining a level of privacy for individuals who can demonstrate a risk to themselves from having their details published.
Any move to make the UK’s PSC register entirely private would defeat one of its key purposes, which is to tackle the use of anonymously owned companies in corruption and money laundering schemes.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...asion-measures

[Firestarter]

I'm disgusted that none of these so-called journalists (including Daphne Caruana Galizia's cowardly sons!) expose the more interesting links.
I've previously posted about the 16 October 2017 murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, for exposing some real scandals in the world of passport buying, corruption and rigging elections, whose business empire includes casinos.


Interestingly somebody got convicted for ordering the hit, Maltese "businessman" Yorgen Fenech, whose business empire includes casinos, reportedly for 150,000 euros ($175,540).
Fenech headed a consortium which was awarded a government contract for a power station. Caruana Galizia was investigating the corruption in awarding this contract when she was murdered.

Not only former PM Joseph Muscat was close to Fenech, who was forced to resign in January 2020 after protests on the streets in Malta, but also his chief of staff Keith Schembri, and former energy minister Konrad Mizzi.
Schembri and Mizzi were linked to 17 Black, a "secret company" owned by Fenech. In March 2021, Schembri was charged with money laundering and fraud.

One suspect in Caruana Galizia’s murder, the "middleman" Melvin Theuma confessed in return for a pardon.
Vince Muscat (no relation to Joseph), pled guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
The brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio were recently sentenced to 40 years in prison: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-yorgen-fenech
(https://archive.ph/fZkn8)


In February 2019, Joseph Muscat invited Fenech to his birthday party at Girgenti, where according to Yorgen Fenech discussed the Caruana Galizia murder, which was denied by Muscat.
They also had repeated phone conversations and sent each other text messages: https://lovinmalta.com/news/yorgen-f...ppointing-him/
(https://archive.ph/s75NJ)