Murdering journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was the last thing Yorgen Fenech needed to close the chapter on the controversial Electrogas deal, the main suspect allegedly told state witness Melvin Theuma.

“Did Fenech ever speak to you about the Electrogas deal?” the board of the public inquiry into the murder asked this morning.

“Once we were speaking about the murder and he told me that he did everything with precision for the Electrogas power station. He told me ‘I finished it – and the murder is the last thing I need to do. I’m feeling trapped between four walls’” Theuma replied.

Fenech was one of three ElectroGas directors and a principal shareholder. The consortium was selected to build and operate the LNG power station in Delimara back in October 2013, with a deal eventually signed in April 2015.

Azeri state energy company Socar, who is a shareholder in Electrogas, purchases gas from standard suppliers like Shell and resells the stock at a benchmarked value to Electrogas, who transports the gas in liquid form and held in a tanker nestled in Delimara Bay.

It is then converted to energy and distributed among homes in Malta.

The 18-year deal has always raised eyebrows, with Malta often paying a higher rate than most European counterparts, all while analysis indicates that Socar made close to €32 million in 2017 alone.

Meanwhile, Caruana Galizia herself honed in on the fact that the Maltese government had guaranteed a €360 million loan taken out by Electrogas Malta.

The deal has long been potentially linked to Fenech’s 17 Black, the Dubai company named as the “target client” for the Panama companies belonging to former Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and former chief of staff Keith Schembri.

A report by the FIAU found that 17 Black had received at least three payments – one of €161,000 from Maltese local agent for the tanker supplying gas to the LNG power station and two separate payments amounting to €1.1 million from Baratzada through ABLV Bank.

ABLV was recently raised in one of Latvia’s most extensive investigations into money laundering yet.

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