Blogger Simon Mercieca denies being paid by Yorgen Fenech’s family

The academic and blogger Simon Mercieca has told a court that he had visited the home of Yorgen Fenech’s mother Patricia and vice-versa, but insisted that, with the exception of a food hamper, he never received any payments or gifts for writing about her son’s court cases.

Mercieca, who has blogged extensively about the charges filed against the Tumas magnate who is awaiting trial on indictment, in accused of masterminding the assasination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, is an associate professor at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Arts, where he lectures on history. He was called to the witness stand in the libel case he filed against blogger Mark Camilleri, who had accused Mercieca of having been paid to publish blogs on Fenech.

Patricia Fenech was due to testify on Thursday, but the magistrate was informed at the start of the sitting that she was unwell, so Mercieca was called to the stand instead, to be cross-examined on by Camilleri’s lawyer, Joseph Mizzi. 

Mercieca confirmed communicating with, and on two occasions meeting Yorgen Fenech’s mother, Patricia. But he explicitly denied having ever received money for his blog posts about the Fenech case, at one point telling the court that his belief was that Fenech had been framed.

Mercieca said the charges against Fenech had been weaponised against former PN leader Adriana Delia, whom he had supported for the PN leadership. “History proved me right… Daphne didn’t like Delia,” Mercieca said, adding that leaked chats between Yorgen Fenech and the former PN leader “were used to harm Delia.”

Mercieca said his interest in the Fenech case was piqued after he hearing the testimonies, saying "red lights started flashing," and after receiving an anonymous letter with information about this case, “which continued to strengthen my suspicions.”

“So you are interested, not because of demographics, but because of the red lights and the letter,” suggested Mizzi in cross-examination.  

The lawyer repeatedly asked Mercieca about his demographic analysis of the case against Fenech, but did not receive a clear answer. “My interest is because in my course at univeristy, my students are following the [judicial] process,” Mercieca said.

When the question was repeated, he said the case had a demographic aspect. “If you see the angle that the process has an influence on a mass of people.”

But when asked directly by the Court as to whether he had actually carried out any academic studies on this topic, Mercieca replied that he had not. “I maintain an absolute separation between my academic work and my blog. I do not even use University resources to work on it.”

“My blog has thousands of articles which I authored,” said the witness. “But when I started following Fenech’s case, yes I started to take a deeper interest in it.” Today Mercieca told the court that he believed Yorgen Fenech was framed.

Mercieca denied having been paid for his blogs. “Sometimes I receive small donations from the public, but these just cover the expenses. They aren’t large, I can afford them.”

He denied having been approached by Patricia Fenech to write. “No. I approached her… And I never received any [payment] either.”

He also denied meeting Fenech and the family lawyers at their property in Portomaso, but confirmed he had twice dined with her.

“The only time is when we invited Patricia Fenech for dinner at Christmas, and she brought us a hamper of food.” The meal took place after Fenech had been charged with the murder, he confirmed.  “I got to know her during the case. Yorgen Fenech’s aunt was a friend of my mother-in-law.”

On another occasion, he had taken his family for a pool day at the Hilton, which is owned by Fenech’s Tumas Group. “We decided to spend a day by the pool and my children chose the Hilton. I took the whole family and I paid my way.” This had happened once, in 2020, he said.

Mizzi asked the witness whether he had ever discussed what Yorgen Fenech was going through with Patricia Fenech. “Something must have been said,” replied the witness, but denied the assertion that she had asked him to write about it, or that she had approached other newspapers to do the same.

“What she said was that when he was arrested, her son was put in a room with a bright light in his face and that she felt this was inhuman. She had tried to speak to some people in the media… I can tell you in private who she approached.”

“Did she tell you that she was prepared to pay media houses for good press?,” asked Mizzi. “No,” Mercieca replied.  He had already been writing about Fenech’s compilation of evidence at the time, he said. “She thanked me, yes, for speaking about the case but she never asked me to write anything.”

Patricia Fenech had invited him over for dinner once, too, he added, but when asked whether the murder case was discussed on that occasion, he said “little to no” mention had been made.

He would communicate with Patricia Fenech through a messaging app, he said, and not over the phone.

Mercieca told the court that as part of a recent property purchase he had been subjected to “enormous” due diligence checks, which he had passed. “I had to give an account of every expense and income. I use credit cards exclusively. If I was paid in cash, I would have to keep this cash somewhere.”

He also said that a recent attempt by his wife to deposit a €50 cheque in her HSBC account had been rejected for “irregular endorsement.”

Camilleri’s lawyer, pointing out that Mercieca was still employed at the University of Malta and enjoyed the support of the Dean of his department, suggested that this incident was not the result of the blogs written about him, but as a result of Mercieca’s own posts about Yorgen Fenech.

Mercieca disagreed. “They are surely not positive propaganda,” he said of Camilleri's blog posts and highlighted a reader’s comment under one of Camilleri’s stories about him, telling the court that it had been written by a fellow academic. “The mafia couldn’t have a better mouthpiece,” it reads.

“Financial damages, I obviously haven’t suffered,” Mercieca said. “But academically I have been ostracised,” later conceding, on the court’s direct question, that his ostracisation was “outside the university community.”

“I tie this to all the propaganda, not just Mark Camilleri,” he added.

The case was adjourned to October. Lawyer William Cuschieri is assisting Mercieca.