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No sensitive documents were saved to Daphne Caruana Galizia's devices, her son testifies
Matthew Caruana Galizia said that he used his technical expertise to help his mother in handling the large volume of data received when investigating Electrogas
27 July 2021, 10:13am
Matthew Agius
Matthew Agius
3 min read
Daphne Caruana Galizia's sons, (from left to right) Matthew, Andrew and Paul, accompanied by lawyer Therese Comodini Cachia, entering court on Monday for the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech, the man accused of masterminding their mother's murder (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)
Matthew Caruana Galizia has told a court that his mother would have never saved sensitive documents on her laptop.
Caruana Galizia testified for two hours this afternoon in the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech, who is accused of commissioning the journalist’s murder.
Cross-examined by lawyer Charles Mercieca from Fenech’s defence team, Caruana Galizia said that the data relating to the murdered journalist’s investigations into 17 Black was stored on an encrypted hard drive instead.
Matthew Caruana Galizia, who was part of the ICIJ team which won a Pulitzer prize for their work on the Panama Papers said that he had used his technical expertise to help his mother in handling the large volume of data which was leaked from the Electrogas consortium.
"I didn't save emails on my mother’s laptop or iPad or anything" Caruana Galizia said, pointing out that this would have been a security risk.
“Where were they stored before?”, asked Mercieca, suggesting that they would have had to have been stored on the laptop before being transferred to the external hard disk that he carried around with him at the time.
But Caruana Galizia rejected the suggestion. "Of course I didn't use my mother's computer to do that...why? Because it’s my mother's computer. I find it strange that I would be using my mother's computer while my mother needed it to work on it" replied Caruana Galizia.
He told Magistrate Rachel Montebello that the leak consisted of “over 100,000 documents” mostly in electronic form.
The cross-examination was never going to be a pleasant one, but today tensions reached boiling point when Caruana Galizia disclosed that Fenech had been convicted of drug charges in the USA and had been “behaving erratically before and after the murder.”
Mercieca objected to the mentioning of this fact, but was contradicted by parte civile lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who said “you cannot censor the truth.”
“You censor the truth!” Mercieca roared back, accusing the other side of being selective with the evidence produced. The defence objected at several junctures during the witness’ testimony, at a point describing his testimony as “media fodder.”
Caruana Galizia continued: "We had discovered that Fenech was convicted of drug possession and was going through a personal crisis at the time. We knew Yorgen Fenech was behaving erratically before and after the murder and secondly my mother would have considered it to be of humongous public interest that one of the main shareholders [in Electrogas] had been convicted of an offence in the USA."
“There was worry at the banks about the loan facility given to Electrogas, and in this email you have the Yorgen Fenech side of things. ‘Our concern is Due Diligence,’" he quoted.
Fenech was a key person in the journalists’ investigation, he said . “We considered him to be a member of this clique that my mother was writing about.”
“Because we saw that Fenech was hugely influential, the volume of emails being exchanged, what was being asked of him by shareholders and Electrogas employees, this led to my mother focusing more on him.”
“As a reporter this draws attention to you but it is the risk you have to take as a journalist,” he said.
Magistrate Rachel Montebello is presiding over the case. Superintendent Keith Arnaud and Inspector Kurt Zahra are prosecuting, aided by Deputy Attorney General Philip Galea Farrugia.
Fenech’s defence lawyers are Marion Camilleri, Charles Mercieca and Gianluca Caruana Curran. Lawyers Jason Azzopardi and Therese Comodini Cachia are appearing parte civile for the Caruana Galizia family.
Matthew Agius was Senior Reporter on Law and Court Affairs at MaltaToday from 2014 to 2024...
“I didn’t use my mother’s computer to do that because it’s my mother’s computer. I find it strange to use my mother’s computer while my mother needed it for work,” he replied.
He adds that the external hard drive was encrypted.
"There were some documents which my mother might have printed out, but I don't remember. I don't really want to talk about..."
“You talk about what we ask you.”
"It must have been over a hundred thousand documents in total," Caruana Galizia replied.
Mercieca says he will ask a question and then reserve cross-examination for the next sitting.
The court tells the witness not to draw conclusions.
Mercieca objects again, saying that if they wanted to testify about the character of the accused, the defence reserved the right to do the same.
"You cannot censor the truth" Azzopardi said.
"You censor the truth!" shouts Mercieca.
"We were doing our best to continue the work that my mother had started. Earlier in 2018 we had said that we need to find out who the owner of 17 Black is and throw a huge amount of effort behind that. This is the result of that effort, that article."
"We felt like things were coming together. These disparate threads were dovetailing […] This was a long running project, planned in 2013 and kept going,” he says.
Meanwhile, Yorgen Fenech gestured. “Illum ma ħareġ xejn,” he says (Nothing new came from this hearing).
The court overrules the objection, however, pointing out that he was giving information to the compilation of evidence.
"I can't go back in time and produce a recording of my conversation with my mother, but I can go back and get notes which had been taken at the time. […] Where I have a note or a message or an email I will present that, but I don't always have that unfortunately.”
“This draws attention to you, but this is the risk you have to take as a reporter,” he says.
Fenech is seen smiling briefly and looking down.
A year later, she mentioned 17 Black publicly, after a long time investigating its ownership. In the comments under this blog post, there is a comment from someone talking about a conversation they witnessed between Mizzi and someone else. Caruana Galizia had replied, saying that it figured and mentioned Yorgen Fenech.
He mentioned that Valletta and Fenech were in a Whatsapp group called “No Valletta No Party”.
Caruana Galizia pauses as he leafs through his file, looking for a document.
This led to a succession of reports later known as the Daphne Project.
There was another time when he had bought a top-up for Degiorgio, but this was a long time ago, he says. He also mentions that he used to go fishing with George Degiorgio at Marsa.
“Fishing, nothing special,” he says.
He says that this was around four or five years ago, “2016, I think”.
“Degiorgio? I think so. At the end of the month he received a ticket and came to me.”
Another witness is called in, Raymond Schembri. He used to lease out cars under Paradise Garage and Lionheart Garage.
“I have checked every file to the last second,” Cardona says.
Meanwhile, Mercieca asks the court of it could order a transcript of these new recordings.
“I don’t know him” the witness replies. “He was commenting on how hot it is and I said it was like a Finnish sauna.”
This question is met with loud protestations from the prosecution, arguing that he is supposed to be questioned on the contents of his testimony.
“I have no idea who he is,” the witness replies.
"I don't recall exactly what kind of conversation I had with my supervisor but I was told to take them to the Hague."
"My instructions for the Maltese authorities were to ensure the devices were in flight mode," Harmoinen said.
“Was he aware that his supervisor was not authorised to do so?” asks the lawyer. He was not, Harmoinen replies.
The witness replies that the Hague had the required tools to unlock and unencrypt the devices, but Mercieca quickly rebuts this, adding that the iMach was not encrypted, and assumably much easier to unlock.
"This is the iMac which I referred to earlier today, which was on and not encrypted," Harmoinen replied.
He further challenges the witness on why he had written down information relating to the iMac and other things in his notes this morning.
"It was the Maltese police," Harmoinen said. However, he could not recall any individual names.
Yorgen Fenech’s wife and his mother are also in attendance.