Undoubtedly her most famous story, Daphne Caruana Galizia was the first to expose that Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri had set up offshore companies in Panama.

A year later, Caruana Galizia uploaded a cryptic post linking a Dubai company called 17 Black to Mizzi, Schembri, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and former EU Commissioner John Dalli.

With the help of leaked documents given to Caruana Galizia before her death, The Daphne Project uncovered that 17 Black belonged to Yorgen Fenech, who has now been charged with her murder.

Leaked documents from the FIAU also showed how 17 Black received over €1 million in payments from Mario Pullicino, the Maltese agent of the LNG tanker in Delimara, and an unnamed Azeri national.

A magisterial inquiry into the Panama Papers remains ongoing, while 17 Black turned out to be the cause of Mizzi’s political downfall. Following reports that Fenech had profited off Enemalta’s 2015 purchase of a Montenegro wind farm, the Labour Party voted to remove Mizzi from its parliamentary group, despite Pizzi’s pleas for innocence.

2. Egrant and the Prime Minister’s wife

Caruana Galizia’s legacy will forever be tied to her claims over Egrant, the third Panamanian company found alongside Mizzi’s and Schembri’s.

Working off of information provided by Pilatus Bank employee Maria Efimova, Caruana Galizia claimed that the infamous account belonged to none other than Michelle Muscat, the wife of then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and had received millions from the Azeri royal family.

A magisterial inquiry eventually concluded that there was no evidence Egrant actually belonged to Michelle Muscat and found forged signatures on a declaration of trust that was handed to the inquiry by former newspaper editor Pierre Portelli.

The full inquiry was kept under lock and key for years but was eventually published after then Opposition Leader Adrian Delia filed a case against the Attorney General. The courts found the AG guilty of breaching Delia’s fundamental human for not granting the Opposition Leader the same rights of disclosure that he had granted the Prime Minister.

Muscat has denounced the Egrant story as the “biggest frame-up in Malta’s political history”. Efimova has left Malta and was last known to be living in Greece, while both she and former inspector Jonathan Ferris have been charged with perjury over their testimony to the Egrant inquiry.

Meanwhille, Muscat has pushed on with his libel cases against Caruana Galizia following her death, insisting he would only drop the suit if her family admit the story was a lie.

3. Pilatus Bank and Schembri’s passports kickbacks 

Caruana Galizia was the first to report on alleged kickbacks involving Keith Schembri and Pilatus Bank.

Schembri is alleged to have received funds from Nexia BT owner Brian Tonna from the sale of citizenship, while also having issued a €650,000 payment to former Times of Malta managing director Adrian Hillman, who has since acquired several government roles.

Schembri, Tonna and Hillman have since been charged over these two inquiries and are pleading not guilty.

Meanwhile, Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad won a court case in the US, where he was charged with bypassing US sanctions on Iran, after it was revealed that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the courts. He has now instituted legal action to try and recover his banking license and claim damages.

4. Vitals Global Healthcare and a pre-destined concession

Caruana Galizia was the first to expose that Vitals Global Healthcare may have been selected as the preferred bidders to privatise three state hospitals, months before the deal was even struck.

Repeatedly slamming VGH’s inexperience, she also published a due diligence report from an unknown company alleging that two foreign contractors had agreed to invest in the project months before any deal.

After Caruana Galizia’s murder, financial difficulties at VGH spurred on Steward Healthcare to purchase the concession just 21 months into operations.

However, the entire contract was thrown into disarray after a judge ruled, following a case instituted by PN MP Adrian Delia, that fraud was committed during three stages of the process and ordered that the hospitals be returned to the state. Steward has appealed this decision.

5. Chris Cardona and the brothel 

In one of her most salacious stories, Caruana Galizia claimed that former Economy Minister Chris Cardona and his consultant Joe Gerada visited a brothel while on government business in Germany. The story included copious details, including quotes from Cardona while at the brothel.

Cardona opened a libel suit and a lengthy legal battle ensued, with Cardona and Gerada fighting tooth and nail to ensure that mobile records – which would have vindicated him – be kept from being used in the case.

While the magistrate eventually decided to keep the pair’s geolocation data, the case was ultimately dropped after her death.

The case fell in 2018 after Cardona failed to turn up to the sittings and Caruana Galizia’s family requested that the libels be cancelled. There has been no further update since then.

6. Adrian Delia and the Soho prostitution ring 

During a heated PN leadership contest defined by party infighting, Caruana Galizia claimed that Delia had, in the early 2000s, helped set up a Barclay’s Jersey bank account that made money off of a prostitution racket in Soho, London.

Delia vehemently denied the reports, filing five separate libel cases against her that he promptly dropped after her murder.

Although The Times reported in 2018 that the FIAU had looked into these claims and flagged a “reasonable suspicion of money laundering”, Delia has never been interrogated or charged.

7. db and their plans for the ITS Site

After the db Group submitted the sole tender for a major project on the former ITS site in Pembroke, Caruana Galizia warned that rumours about such a deal had been floating around throughout the industry for the past few years.

She would also later claim that db was already selling its plans to develop a hotel and a high-rise luxury living complex on the piece of prime government land months before it was even granted a permit.

In what became a recurring theme towards the end of Caruana Galizia’s life, DB’s owner Silvio Debono issued a massive 19 libels against her, one for each sentence in a particular blog post, but he dropped them following her murder.

The project itself was subjected to an eight-year legal battle, with residents, local councils and NGOs adamantly opposing it, and has undergone some structural changes. However, it was given the final go-ahead by the courts earlier this year and works have now commenced.

8. John Dalli and the Ponzi scheme 

Caruana Galizia accused former EU Commissioner John Dalli of using his two daughters as a front to run a Ponzi scheme which had scammed evangelical Christians of millions of dollars.

The claim, which has since gone to court, said that Eloise Marie Corbin Klein posed as a missionary, scamming a massive $600,000 on the basis that the money was going towards an African project.

The money, however, appeared to go to bank accounts owned by Dalli’s daughters.

All three were charged with fraud and money-laundering, but Klein passed away before the case could conclude.

9. BOV’s problems with US correspondent banks

In 2016, Caruana Galizia claimed that Joseph Muscat and a few other key officials had been scrambling in the USA to ensure that correspondent banking relationships with Maltese banks didn’t end.

In June 2019, Bank of Valletta lost its last USD correspondent bank, forcing it to start using Western Union to clear dollar transactions.

Thankfully, it struck a deal with banking giant Citibank earlier this year.

Bonus: Raiding the shops for Christmas goodies

Although she will go down in history for taking on some of Malta’s biggest political forces, Caruana Galizia had a softer and more informal side which she often displayed in the Taste & Flair magazine, as well as in her Running Commentary blog.

This is how she described Christmas shopping in December 2013:

“We raid the shops for spices and scented oils, truffle paste, and piles of salami, luscious chocolates and rich biscuits. And somehow it all just disappears. Pies, cakes, and tarts, pastry and foie gras, Stilton and brie, port and brandy, pheasant and turkey or a big leg of pork – it certainly is a time of largesse and not a time to measure things out, except on your ingredients list”.

What occurred on 16th October 2017 was not just the murder of a journalist but the elimination of a human being with a love for life and an inner nature as complex as the rest of us, only with a particular gift of putting her thoughts into words. Her assassination was a stain on Maltese history but was first and foremost a human tragedy.

And as we reflect on that dark day six years on, we would do well to keep this mind.

Will you commemorate Daphne Caruana Galizia today?