Matthew Caruana Galizia Reveals Reuters Spent Half A Million To Find Out Yorgen Fenech Owns 17 Black
Global media giant Thomson Reuters had spent around half a million euros to find out Yorgen Fenech owned the mysterious Dubai company 17 Black, Matthew Caruana Galizia has revealed.
“While [Joseph] Muscat’s team were doing everything possible to stop an investigation into 17 Black, Thomson Reuters spent around half a million euros on the investigation to uncover its owner, Yorgen Fenech,” Caruana Galizia wrote. “If it were not for this, and the source who decided to speak up, the fact would have been concealed forever. Put that in your “no stone unturned” pipe and smoke it.”
Fenech’s ownership of 17 Black was revealed in November 2018 by the Daphne Project, a journalistic collaboration including Reuters that was set up to complete the assassinated journalist’s work.
Leaked emails from the Panama Papers reveal that 17 Black and another Dubai company called Macbridge had been listed as target clients to transfer millions of euros to companies owned by Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri.
The Daphne Project also revealed that 17 Black’s bank account at the Noor Bank in Dubai had received three payments – one single payment of €161,000 from Mario Pullicino, the local agent for the tanker supplying gas to the LNG power station, and two separate payments amounting to €1.1 million from an Azeri security guard.
The identity of Macbridge’s owner remains unknown.
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