Hundreds of WhatsApp messages were exchanged between Yorgen Fenech, the main suspect in the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination, and Malta’s Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis.

Times of Malta revealed that the pair shared 700 messages between January 2019 and October 2019. This comes days after reports that thousands of messages may have been shared between Fenech and a cabinet member.

The contents of the WhatsApp group were lifted off Fenech’s phone by Europol, who were handed the device immediately after Fenech’s arrest in November 2019. They will be exhibited in court when experts are called to testify in October.

Fenech was arrested over the murder in November 2019, he emerged major suspect in the crime to police in 2018.

Zammit Lewis and Fenech allegedly met over meals throughout 2019. This was well after Fenech was revealed to be the owner of 17 Black, the Dubai-based company linked to major corruption scandals in Malta’s government.

“I had ceased all contact with Yorgen Fenech well before he was implicated in the assassination of Ms Daphne Caruana Galizia and this remains the case till today,” Zammit Lewis said.

However, Zammit Lewis insisted back in July that there was no relationship between the pair, claiming he only got to know him when serving as Tourism Minister.

Fenech’s links to Malta’s cabinet have been laid bare since his arrest.  There are roughly 800 messages between Fenech and Joseph Muscat’s right-hand man, Keith Schembri, who remains under investigation for his potential role in the crime.

Recently it was confirmed by inspectors that Muscat, Schembri, and Fenech had a shared WhatsApp group between themselves.

Schembri, along with former OPM official Kenneth Camilleri, remain under investigation over their links to the murder. Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has been interrogated under caution.

Fenech has claimed that Schembri was the actual mastermind of the plot, while Muscat was one of three people who knew of the plan after the fact.