This Is Where Daphne Caruana Galizia Was Heading To Before She Got Killed
Daphne Caruana Galizia was heading out to the bank when she was killed in a car bomb explosion in October, her sons have confirmed.
“The last time our mother left our house was to go to the bank,” the Caruana Galizias said at a conference on journalist murders in Vienna yesterday. “She wanted access to her account; frozen by Malta’s economy minister. She barely made it out of her drive, dying without access to her own money, while the minister remains in cabinet, and we her heirs continue fighting him in court to have that money released.”
There is no indication that Caruana Galizia’s visit to the bank was in any way related to Chris Cardona having had frozen part of her assets.
The case in question dates back to last February, when Cardona and his aide Joe Gerada requested the courts issue a €47,000 garnishee order on four libel cases they had filed instigated against Caruana Galizia’s over her reports that they had visited the brothel Acapulco during an official visit to Germany. Back then, Cardona warned Caruana Galizia that he was ready to file more libel suits against her, each one with a garnishee order attached to it, if the journalist persisted in writing about ‘Brothelgate’.
The garnishee orders – which were a first in Maltese press history – were based on the maximum damages they could have won from the four libel cases, ie. €11,500 per case. The drastic action sparked outrage, a protest organised by the Nationalist Party, and a fundraising campiagn which raised almost €70,000 for Caruana Galizia within a few days. The government reacted by announcing plans to abolish garnishee orders against journalists as part of a wholesale revamp of Malta’s press laws.
After HSBC handed all of Caruana Galizia’s savings (some €43,000) to the court and Caruana Galizia handed over the remaining €4,000, the courts lifted the garnishee order against her in April. However, her €47,000 in savings remain in the court’s hands.
During a recent discussion on the proposed new press law, PN MP Beppe Fenech Adami accused Cardona of hypocrisy by noting that he had criticised Cardona for supporting the bill when he himself had two orders in place against Caruana Galizia. Cardona’s bizarre response was to say that he had filed a request for the garnishee orders to be revoked a few days after Caruana Galizia’s assassination – when they had already been revoked for six months.
“Unlike my counterparts from the Opposition, I did not feel, due to the sensitivity of the circumstances, that I should make any public statements that could possibly be spun or interpreted as me trying to get political mileage from the situation,” he said.
Economy minister Chris Cardona
On 30th January at 11:45pm, Daphne Caruana Galizia uploaded a blog saying Cardona and another man – who was not yet identified as Joe Gerada – were at the Acapulco brothel in Velbert.
Caruana Galizia said that Cardona had emerged naked from the brothel shower at around 8pm shouting: “Ħaqq Alla kemm hu kiesaħ l-ilma.” (“Damn, the water’s cold”).
Cardona vehemently denied the accusation and said he and Joe Gerada had spent the night touring Velbert, eating out, and drinking beer in his hotel room.
After suing Caruana Galizia for libel, Cardona then filed an objection to the journalist’s court request to have his phone records for 30th January preserved – describing such a request as a “fishing expedition”. However, the court ruled in favour of Caruana Galizia in July and ordered local mobile phone operators to hand over Cardona’s mobile data for that night.
On 23rd October, a week after Caruana Galizia was assassinated, her eldest son Matthew – also a journalist – said the family wants the case to continue.
“Chris Cardona has an interest in stopping the case moving forward,” he said.
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