Koħħu’s family offered hush money by alleged Daphne bomb suppliers

Report by Matthew Vella, MaltaToday, Jacob Borg and Ivan Martin for Times of Malta as part of a joint collaboration coinciding with the three-year anniversary of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia

Murder suspect Vince Muscat’s family was offered hush money late in a bid to stop him from further implicating the alleged suppliers of the bomb used to assassinate journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Muscat, known as il-Koħħu, identified to police two suspected gang members, Robert Agius and Jamie Vella, as the people who supplied the three alleged triggermen with the explosive device.

The murder suspect went on to give taped testimony about the alleged bomb suppliers to the police last January in a bid to walk free from charges that he, together with brothers Alfred and George Degiorgio, planted the bomb and triggered the explosion that killed the journalist on October 16, 2017.

According to Muscat, the initial plan was to shoot the journalist from a vantage point overlooking her Bidnija home.

He told investigators that Agius and Vella supplied three rifles with telescopic sights for them to try out.

After all three rifles were test-fired, two of them were returned as they “were not very good”, il-Koħħu told police.

One of the rifles was even “rusty”, Muscat said.

The details emerged from a joint collaboration between MaltaToday and the Times of Malta.

Muscat pointed towards Alfred Degiorgio as the person with experience in handling the rifles and the one who would carry out the assassination attempt with the weapon.

The Degiorgios maintain their innocence and are set to face a trial in connection with the murder.

The attempt to shoot the journalist through a window where she often worked on her laptop was later abandoned in favour of the car bomb.

He told investigators that Agius and Vella showed them how to arm the device, described as being half the size of an A4 paper, and also provided them with the SMS code necessary to detonate it.

Muscat said they were also told by the pair that the bomb would detonate around 15 to 30 seconds after the SMS was sent.

The fatal SMS with the code “Rel1=on” was allegedly sent by George Degiorgio just before 3pm on 16 October, 2017.

Robert Agius, together with his brother Adrian and Jamie Vella were among the 10 men arrested in December 2017 during raids on multiple locations suspected as being used to plot and execute the murder.

All three were released without charge days later.

Late last year, one of Muscat’s family members was approached in Marsa by Agius and Vella with an offer: the pair would give the family €1,500 per month in exchange for Vince Muscat’s silence about the journalist’s murder and other crimes.

When contacted, Muscat’s lawyer Marc Sant confirmed the offer was made and said that it had been refused. The police were informed about this attempt back in January.

Sant said police have shown “little interest” in the information about the attempt to silence Muscat.

The criminal defence lawyer Arthur Azzopardi, who until recently in June was defending Robert Agius in court on a heroin-trafficking conspiracy charge, said he was not acting for the Agiuses and could not comment on the information Muscat had given to the police.

Azzopardi, who before November 2019 was representing Vince Muscat, denied having known of the information Muscat gave to the police, before dropping the brief for his client.

Sources said the police have of late not dedicated many resources to reeling in the bomb suppliers as their main focus at this stage of the investigation is on those involved in the commissioning of the murder.

However, Maltese law enforcement has requested help from their European counterparts to help bring down the men believed to have supplied the bomb which killed Caruana Galizia.

The request was made to Europol in 2019 and is aimed at gathering enough evidence of criminal activity to bring the men to justice.

MaltaToday understands that Maltese police have identified brothers Robert and Adrian Agius as the heads of a local crime group and described them as “high-value targets”. The request is for collaboration with other EU law enforcement agencies to share intelligence.

Police sources said they were aware of the claim.

“Yes, we’re aware of the hush money claim. But the people making the claim would have to testify about this. We still need to corroborate certain claims. We need to be careful about the problem of double jeopardy. But we are determined to get to the bottom of this case.”