Episode 4: You Knew We Were Coming

Freedom of speech in a real democracy is something which the people impose on the government, and not the other way round. That's what is wrong with Malta. It's a society in which freedom of speech has had to be imposed on a public that rejects it because it doesn't understand the imperatives that drive it.

For the Record, interview with George de Georgia, fifth December twenty seventeen.

It's twenty four hours after the swat raid on the potato shed on the Marsaki side and the arrest of Daphne's three assassins, Chinese George de Georgio, his brother Alfred de Bin de Georgio and Vincent the kop Moscat. We're in a small interrogation room, one table in the futures and on your recorder picking up everywhord. It's time for Chinese George, the man who triggered the car bomb that killed Dephanie, to be asked some questions.

Chinese George looks like what he is, middle aged, thinning hair, a squat, heavy set guy, maybe a little out of shape, but still unmistakably an intimidating presence.

Think tony soprano, not so smart, not so tall, but about as ruthless. It's not the first time he spent a night in custody. This is a man who has been in interrogation rooms like this many times before, and one who has walked free before.

Across the table from Chinese George is Inspector Keith Arnaud, the leader of the investigation into Daphnese murder, one of Malter's most experienced homicide investigators.

Also in the room is Inspector Zara, his colleague and.

The warning this will be a somewhat one sided conversation.

George, please, how old are you? I'll ask you again, how old are you? George?

What you're hearing our actions? And a recreation based on lead transcripts from an interrogation at Multipolice ARGQ. We translated it into English.

And the unwritten code for Chinese George in this situation is clear, don't talk to cops.

In that case. What is your father's name? George?

In fairness, Inspector are not does already have all this information and much more. But this isn't about George's name or his father. It's about who is really in control in this interview room.

As we told you yesterday, George, and as is written on the arrest warrant, we have arrested you on suspicion of the murder of the journalist Dafnie Carbona Galizia.

Do you have anything to say to this?

After the preliminaries, Inspector Arnau gets right to it. He directly asks the first question that he doesn't yet know the answer to.

George, did you know that we were coming for you?

From my hard podcast topic Studios in Vespucci, I'm.

John Sweeney and I'm Manuel Delia.

And this is Crooks Everywhere, Episode four, you knew we were coming.

In the interview room, Inspector Arnaut is feeling the heat regardless of her conditioning. This is the biggest case of his career and also maybe the riskiest. A lot of people will be very unhappy if this case isn't solved, not just in Malta but around the world, but some very powerful people in Malta will probably also be unhappy if it is solved. Both sides have a lot riding on this.

And if there are mistakes made, everyone will be looking for someone to apply.

Exhibit KK three is a photo of a reproduction of the device that triggered the bomb an electronic circuit connected to a SIM card, with the card remotely activated by text message. We have proof that you were the person who sent this SMS?

Is this true.

And Inspector Arnold's favor is the mountain of forensic and electronic data evidence, enabled by the assistance from the FBI and other foreign forces, and supplemented with phone taps and local CCDV at TODBT discoveries made after debate.

Immediately after the arrest, police divers search the bottom of the harbor next to the keyside by the potato shed, and they found the seabed was littered with discarded phones, including the phones used in Daphne's murder. Some of the SIM cards still work and can have their call data extracted from them. So what's the story behind the underwater

It's a huge breakthrough for Inspact that are and the FBI team helping him.

As you can see, George, we are dealing with facts here in controvertible technical evidence. No one will ever be able to say I must have been confused, I misremembered. Oh this actually means something else. Uh no, So I think you'd be wiser to tell me what you have to say.

About all this. He's right. The phone evidence, both location data and recording of cause is damning. And it's also not the kind of evidence that witness intimidation can change. That's one Inspector Arno is hinting at when he talks to people becoming confused or misremembering on the witness stand.

Witnesses often get forgetful in trials involving organized crime.

But this brings Inspector arna back to his earlier question, the question that he still can't figure out how the criminals seemed to be expecting him and his offices in the SWAT raid. There's a whole range of clues that suggests this.

What was the reason, for example, that we did not find the keys to the room and.

Your mobile phones? Your mobile phone disappeared.

It turns out that all of the killers had conveniently just lost their mobile phones when the raid took place.

Why did you have the phone number of your girlfriend written on your arm, Georgia, on your wrist? Is it normal for anyone to write the number of his woman on his arm?

Isn't that right?

The mobile number of George's girlfriend is scrawled on his skin, and pen Inspector Arno is right. It's a strange way to keep important phone numbers. But if you know you are about to be raided by the police and you are planning to throw away your cell phone, then it makes more sense.

And then there is the dog that didn't bark. George has a much which he usually keeps in the potato shed to act as a guard dog. But on the day of the swat rate, the guard dog with a wall.

And what about the dog, the dog you usually take to the potato shed.

What happened to it? Why wasn't that dog tied up in her usual place?

Of course, this is another thing that makes more sense if you are expecting a heavily armed police rate. If you know as what rate is coming, you would want to make sure that your loyal guard dog is locked away somewhere safe in advance, out of harm's way. One thing is pretty clear and what has most high profile murder investigation. Somehow the criminals already know every move the law has planned before it happens. And the question is how.

George known for a long time that we were coming.

Even if George and the other killers appear cool under pressure, the mood of the rest of the country is far from calm at this time, both the Daphne's supporters and her enemies.

Let's start with the supporters. The initial wave of protests centered around the Great Siege Monument isn't dying away. In fact, around the time of the swat rate, it is growing stronger and proving to be an even bigger source of annoyance to the government. And Daphne's role as a groundbreaking female journalist in Mota is particularly important to many protesters.

Shortly after Daphanie I was killed, I was pulling the news and the parliament resumed and the opposition wanted to put on the table that they should have a debate about, you know, the killing of Deafhnite.

This is one of the protest leaders. French born Cleman s. Dujardin, a software CEO who has lived in More since the early two thousands. Someone I know a bit. We've been married seven years.

And as I'm watching that going on, the government to refuses to have that debt on that day, and I'm sitting there and I'm expecting a position to walk out of Parliament, you know, in protests, and the opposition stayed there. And I said no, I mean, if we don't even have an opposition that is going to try to protect this country and to step up and do something about it, then we must do something about it. So I called

Multiic politics are still incredibly male dominated. But the protests and definitely's memory, weren't.

People understood that, you know, it needed to be led by women. At first.

I don't know.

On Castile Square, maybe we may have had ten twelve tents, so not many people but then people started coming. So in the evening a lot of people came to the square and started bringing food, bringing drinks. Actually, on the first evening defn Kamana gal It's as family centers, a stock of pizzas with the famous lorel leaves that simbolized definitely now. And that's how it started, you know. And the next day more people came with their tents and slaps, and that's how it.

Go This was the start of Malta's first female lad and corruption movement, known as Occupy Justice.

So it had gone in two thousands of people joining in the evening on Saturday evening, the square was packed and you know, and people were not necessarily sad, you know, it wasn't happy, but you know, the renion of people that needed to be there all to get all together and have a sense of belonging, of doing something may be useful.

And Manuel, you were part of the wider protest movement.

Too, I was for many of us at the time. The protests were one of the very few positive things to come out of the whole tragedy. It did feel like a great mass of people who had been silent were now speaking up, attending protests and vigils, and there

So we're parked directly in front of a really sensationally baroque church. And what's extraordinary is this. This isn't a very very big place, but the church is magnificent.

We're we're in Saint Nicholas Square in Sijiwi, which is a village to the southwest of Valletta.

There's a couple of tourists doing a selfie on a stick just close by, but we're not here for the tourists, and we're not here for the beautiful baroque church. We're here because there's a rather sweet looking bar on the corner and it's got a nice red awning which is flickering a little bit in the afternoon summer's breeze, as an old wooden blackboard thing something scribbled on it. I quite fancy a drink? Can we go for a drink?

Them?

And will?

I think I'll pass. The reason I wanted to show it to you was not tourism. It's a bit of a watering hole for all sorts of different people. But a couple of French journalists, reporting about six months after Daphne was killed, came here because they were pointed to the place as a favorite of the the Georgio brothers. They'd come drinking here, and they asked locals with hidden microphones if they knew that the Georgia was They said they did, and if they saw him drinking here, and

So I find this really incredible that you've got a cabinet minister of a country who drinks with two hit men.

He would he would have explained that away by saying he was a lawyer that used to practicing the criminal courts. One person who was here speaking to the reporters distinctly remembered Chris Cardona and Alfred de Georgio having a sullen conversation for about an hour in this bar, and then they went out for a walk.

When was the date of that conversation, Roughly it.

Was a few days before the Georgias were arrested November twenty seventeen.

And when they're arrested, the evidence seems to be that they knew that they were about to be raided, because, for example, one of them had written his girlfriend's number on his on his on his hand, on his skin. Just the story at least suggests that the inside and who tipped them off could have been Economics minister at the time, Chris Cardona. What does Cardona himself say about this?

Chris Cardona denies any and all wrongdoing and says he's never had anything to do with the killing of defne Caarona Galicia or the plotting of it. But he did not try to explain away why he was drinking with someone who a week later would be arrested and charged with killing define Karona Galicia. We've heard about Chris cardoona before. He is the same government minister that was noticed by Dafne's sons and widower visiting the law courts as a

In twenty seventeen. Chris Cardooner has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder of Daphne Caroina Galiticia. However, he has admitted to knowing Alfred de Bean de Georgia through his previous work as a criminal lawyer.

And Daphnie and mister Cardona also had a history. In fact, Cardonah was one of the government politicians Daphne was most famous for writing about, along with the Prime Minister Joseph Moscat As Economy Minister. Cardona was a very senior minister who was also a deputy leader of the ruling Labor Party, so a key player, and Cardona has reason not to be particularly the fond of Daphne.

January thirtieth, twenty seventeen, breaking Malta's Economy Minister Labour Party deputy leader in German Brothel Tonight.

Issue Daphnie over one of her most famous stories Daphne's report was posted while mister Cardona was still allegedly in the brothel itself.

Malta's Minister for the Economy, Chris card is currently at a brothel in the German town of Velbert, near Disseldorff. Patrons pay eighty euros to get in through the door at the FKK Akapulco are given food and drinks, but must then pay for sex with the girls and women.

Definitely claimed to have a source inside the brothel feeding her information and definitely always prided herself on providing the most embarrassing alleged details.

The FKK Acapulco includes a sauna, and at one point, at around eight pm, the Economy Minister emerged naked from the shower, shouting alakesa Leima, God, damn, this water is cold. At this time of night, no government spokesman or communications aids are available to take questions on whether the Economy Minister is in Germany on official government business and if so, whether his visit to a brothel will be passed off as travel expenses along with his mini bar bill.

And from that moment on just the name of the brothel, the Acapulco became a punchline in Malta.

There were people who were thought that it was hilarious, you know, like a minister being spotted in a brothel in Germany is absolutely scandalous. What the hell is a politician doing, like on government work abroad, but in a brothel.

Nicole Malak is a journalist at Molta.

Today and obviously when that broke, it had such an impact in the news tycho when it broke, so it was hard not to find out about it. Like even if you weren't following local news at the time, you knew that this happened and that this broke, and that definite Karwana Galicia reported it, but.

Definitely had more to say. The very next day she posted a further.

Update, breaking brothelgate. The Economy Minister went to the same brothel again today. It's just occurred to me that the minister and his consultant wouldn't have gone back for sex this afternoon but for negotiation on making sure their backs are covered. Given that the story had broken and the minister had issued a press release of denial.

It was one of the moments when her writing moved beyond the niche of political blogging. In English to setting the news agenda for the whole country, and as definitely mentioned, Cardona fiercely denied the story from the start and has ever since, but Defne, enjoying the fight, responded with more posts and more details.

My source, who saw rather too much of our naked government minister at the Velbert brothel, has now specified that the tattoo of Cheguraara's face is on Chris Cardona's right shoulder to the back and is done in blue ink. I asked whether he also has, say nipple ring or one of those doodars they snip into the end of their uncircumcised Frankfurt sausage, and was told sadly not.

It was all the things that made Defnie and her writing so popular and so different from mainstream Multese journalism, rude, chatty, scandalous, insulting and completely unafraid of authority.

And then she began reporting on the reporting of her story.

The Minister for the Economy, who spent the evening of Monday, the thirtieth of January in a brothel in Velbert, Germany, is currently lying through his teeth on Reno Bujea's TVM show des Set, except that his lies take a very interesting form. Instead of lying about where he was, instead of where he really was, he says it's all lies. Like other journalists. Boujaya tried to press him a little on where he was instead and got the stock answer, I'll prove it in court, and then in the next breath,

She does.

I'm surprised nobody seems to have noticed what's going on here. He's refusing to present his proof to the media in the here and now and says he will wait for the court cases and prove it under oath, but then says he doesn't have to prove anything because the burden of proof in libel cases is on the other party.

And here is where this story took a turn that in most democracies would be unthinkable.

February eighth, twenty seventeen, the Minister for the Economy and his policy officer have frozen my bank accounts. My statement issued to all media.

Today.

Both men took the exceptional measure of filing precautionary warrants on my assets for the maximum libel damages that would be payable to them should they win all four cases. Eleven eight hundred and sixty five euros times four equals forty seven, four hundred and sixty euros. My bank accounts have consequently been frozen to this amount and will remain frozen to that amount until the case is concluded, many years from now.

A quick summary, A journalist writes a story about a politician. He sues her, but before the case can even begin, all her personal bank guards stop working as part of the court proceedings.

It's an incredible show of power. Daphnie has been sued for libel many times before, and defending those suits was in itself a huge financial burden. But freezing her bank accounts over a libel case that hadn't even begun. No one could remember that ever happening to a journalist before.

In Malta.

The implications for democracy and for the freedom of the press are terrible. There is no initial process of scrutiny for civil libel suits, and politicians can sue on the most frivolous basis. The system as it stands is ripe for abuse by politicians who try to silence the journalists who expose them so that their wrongdoing is not exposed.

Daphne was murdered eight months later, and the reason she left her house that day and got into her car, not knowing there was a bomb in it, was because she needed to go to an appointment with her bank because her cards were frozen.

The libel law in Malta has since been changed so that this kind of financial throttling before a case is even started cannot happen again.

But remarkably, even Daphne's murder didn't end the legal battles with Cardona. Under another quirk of Maltese law, libel cases are passed on to your descendants in the event of your death.

So like a family heirloom, the have been inherited by those she left behind.

Daphne's grief stricken sons and with over found themselves appearing in court and spending money to defend themselves from a court action over blog posts that they had no part in writing. It was just one of over forty cases that were outstanding against Deafhanie at the time of her death, and which then were passed on to her family.

Again, none of this is something that would happen in most other European democracies.

Daphne's family wanted to fight the case, believing that phone data would prove her version of events. After the court ordered the phone company to preserve the data showing where mister Cardona's phone had been that faithful night, he failed to show up in court every time he was due to testify. Eventually the case was dropped.

So to summarize, Jaffney accused the minister visiting a brothel while on government business. The minister sued her for libel, freezing her bank accounts before the case had come to court. Then, even after her murder, the case continued, with Japhane's sons defending their mother's journalism and the minister refusing to appear in court or present evidence to support his version of events, even though he was bringing the case.

Welcome to Malta. Cardona has claimed that he never dropped the charges and that it was Daphane's family who moved to have the charges dropped, And so a few months after Daphane's death, that's where the ballad of Daphne and Chris Cardona would have rested. Cardona certainly had a bitter dispute with her, but their conflict seemed to have been limited to the pages of her blog and the court system.

But new bits of the story kept on coming out, which is how we get back to the sleepy village bar by the baroque church in Sijiwi and the question of how Daphine's assassins somehow knew exactly when the police were gonna come for them, And this is where even the simplest facts become.

Hazy again, Welcome to Malta. So a team of investigative journalists from the French media Franz De and Radio Franz had heard rumors that Cardona had some kind of connection to at least one of the assassins, Alfred Deben the Georgio. To test that out, they visited this Egeui bar undercover and used hidden cameras to speak to regular drinkers there. You can still watch the undercover footage online. Cardona at

Too, and that wasn't all. Gradually, more pieces of evidence began to emerge, suggesting interactions between the killers and Chris Cardona. For example, several eyewitnesses told the media that Alfred the Bean and Chris Cardona had both been guessed at the same bachelor party five months before Daphne's death. Cardona said he couldn't remember seeing Alfred the Bean at the party

In a statement in twenty eighteen, Cardona responded in the Times of Malta to the suggestion that he might be involved in Daphne's murder. This extract from the statement is read by an actor.

I understand that the victims' families and indeed the public swant for answers, but attempting at all costs to make the public believe that there was any type of involvement from my end, is purely absurd and unjust and will definitely not help investigations, nor will it help to lead to further answers, but will merely fuel the sensationalism surrounding such a barbaric act, to the detriment of the public and the investigation itself.

Which takes us back to the central question for Inspector Arnaut in the weeks after the Swat raid. How did Dafnese killers know that the police were going to raid them? Who warned them? And why Chris Cardona potentially had a motive because of what definitely had written about him the minister in the brothel story, and he could have warned the killers. He knew at least one of the assassins and they were seen together by a member of the

At this point, the investigation seems to have hit a brick wall. The contract killers are in jail but maintaining complete silence and clear leads as to who hired them, who wanted Dafney dead is still missing, and Chris Cardener is never charged with involvement in the murder. But there is one other person involved with this story, however, a man who becomes very important from this point on.

A rich and powerful man who will go on to be accused of ordering Daphnese murder, although the assassins were not hired by him directly.

After all, dealing directly with contract killers is a difficult business.

Instead, this powerful man finds someone who can work on his behalf to organize the killing, someone who can connect the criminal underworld with the world of Multa's economic and political elite, a go bit I mean a connection between the highest and lowest sections of society. That man's name is Melvin Toma, the Middleman, and so far no one suspects his involvement in this crime at all. In December twenty seventeen, around the time that Chinese George is being

But now, as his engine ticks over outside the Hilton, he's questioning his life choices and the aftermath of the arrest of Chinese George. Alfred the Bean and Vincent Leacough is beginning to feel exposed, and he's right to feel that way. He knows that he knows too much, and this murder has now proved to be bigger news than he or anyone else involved. Imagioned as he waits for the next rich foreign tourist to wave him over for

That's next time. Crooks Everywhere is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Topic Studios and Vespucci. It's reported and hosted by me Manuel Delia and John Sweeney. The singer producer is Leo Hornack, The producer is Maddi Hickish. Krish Denes Kumar is the assistant producer. The story editors are Emma Federill, Matt Willis and Philippa Geering. The managing producers are Thomas Curry and Rachel Byrne. The voice of Dafnie Carmana Galizia is played