Episode 7: The Bat Signal

Malta's institutions are deliberately being undermined, weakened and destroyed to allow corruption and criminality to flourish. Those who voted for this mess have a great deal to be ashamed of.

Strasbourg. The European Parliament Clean Recession of twenty fourth of October twenty seventeen. Parliament President Antonio Tajani approaches the central podium and signals for quiet. Comes as President.

Gome Chittadino, as a citizen com journalista, as a journalist, Volo.

Esprit used to express my indignation.

Indign brutal at the brutal assassination Didne Gwana Galizi.

Of Deafnite Karwana Galitzia.

This is not normal business for the European Parliament. It's rare for the Parliament to discuss an individual murder case in one of its member states, but today it's happening.

Quiborns her family and the galleries, her husband, her three sons, and I wish to say to them that we stand alongside them, along with thousands of Montice are demonstrated in the streets.

The camera pans up to the observer's gallery, showing Daphne's widower, Pisa and her three sons Matthew, Andrew and Paul, sitting together dressed in suits and ties, blank faced, barely begun to grieve. It's just ten days since Daphne's murder. Daphne's middle son, Andrew, still remembers this speech.

Yes, I remember it. It's actually strangely nice to see this again and everaged it.

It's impossible to imagine the strength that it must take for the family to be traveling and campaigning for justice before Daphnitely has even been buried. But this parliamentary session in Strasbourg does matter for us.

That was a turning point when we moved from grieving to campaigning.

It was a very conscious decision.

It was against everything that our emotions were telling us to do, so suddenly we were transformed from a grieving family into essentially professional lobbyists.

That switch from grief to campaigning is the first step in a new and unusual strategy to bring Daphne's killers to justice, a strategy to short circuit the usual channels of Mota's compromised institutions and divided culture. But it takes its toll.

We were turning up with speaking points about the rule of law in the country, about the corruption crisis, and in doing so, we were in a way dehumanizing our own mother. We were turning her into a case, and we were turning ourselves into campaigners rather than grieving sons.

So far, we've heard about two routes for Dafnese killers to be caught, First through the official police investigation, second through political pressure from the protest movement in Dafnese's memory, the sit ins and marches in Valletta and the gatherings at the Great Siege Monument, the sense of raw anger

Ultimately, this new strategy will produce breakthroughs in the case that would never have happened otherwise, and will bring the family close of an ever to finding out who ordered Japanese murder.

No silin and we will not remain Sanscobert, we must.

See the perpetrators of this murder brought to justice. From iHeart Podcasts, Topic studios and vespoci. I'm Manuel Delia and I'm John Sweeney and this is Crooks Everywhere, Episode seven, The bad Signal.

Sir Dafne is have decided to try and make this a global story. I know from experience that isn't easy. Foreign news, except for wars, rarely makes the front page in London, Paris or New York.

And the family are painfully aware of that, aware that the new cycle will soon move on from their mother's death, so they have to strike quickly.

I worked on the story of Daphne's murder for the BBC. I knew that from the point of view of my bosses, this was a compelling story they wanted to cover, but not one that could take up too much of the spotlight. As the months wore on, the chances of identifying the perpetrators seemed pretty slim. An unsolvable murder in a small European country. Next item.

Please all that said, I think Daphne's family do have one ease of their sleeve.

I've worked on a number of cases over the years of campaigns for justice for journalists who have been killed.

Robert Vincent works for Reporters with Borders, a charity that advocates for persecuted journalists around.

The world, and I often work closely with families in these campaigns. Not every family is able to speak out in this way. In fact, the way that they've been able to organize and really sustain this effer over so many years is highly unusual.

The ace of the sleeve is the family itself, and there's set of skills.

So Matthew was an award winning journalist. I think he had already been part of a team that won a Pulitzer.

And then there's Andrew Dafnie Middleson, who we've already heard from.

Andrew is always known as the diplomat because he had in fact been a diplomat for some time, and personality wise, of the three, he is definitely the diplomatic one. He is very kind and very gracious.

Paul, the youngest brother, was at that time living in London and later also became an award winning journalist and the author of Dafnie's biography.

So a diplomat and two journalists, all with international connections.

Dephnie's husband Peter and her sister Corinne are also essential team members. He is a lawyer and she's a pr consultant, also useful skills. This is Andrew the diplomat, And what.

Me and my family realized very early on in Malta was that international pressure was not only our only hope because the domestic environment was just so difficult, but that it was actually our most powerful lever, more powerful than say, the opposition party, more powerful than what was left of the press in Malta.

But that raises the same question, how do you get the rest of the world to care about a murder in Malta.

One possibility is the focus on the European Union's idea of itself, the idea of Europe as a place of democracy, rule of law, and freedom of the press, a place where it matters if journalists are murdered.

Malta is such a small country, it's so dependent on new membership.

Bluntly, we Maltese need Europe more than Europe needs.

Us, but so so dependent on international partnerships that it's a unique example where international pressure can actually overcome domestic resistance.

One really important example our economy depends on international finance being based here. And if the EU decides that Malta is no longer a stable, well governed member of the Union, or even publicly criticizes how the country is run, then those rich international investors might go elsewhere.

Which means a public tribute to Japanese's work in the European Parliament might have real financial consequences.

So the first weeks after Dapnese's death go by, the street protests build, and at this point the FBI come in to investigate the forensic trail left by the killers, and men like Melvin the Middleman, mister alleged Mastermind, and the Georgia's become increasingly worried, gradually realizing that this isn't just another local car bombing that will ultimately be ignored by the police.

And that's when Daphne's family decide to make solving Daphanese murder a global cause for journals.

Everywhere and here Daphne's son, Matthew the journalist, has a piece of luck. An international organization has just been formed that was designed for exactly the situation.

An organization called Forbidden Stories.

The idea is that when a journalist is persecuted or murdered, a global bet signal is sent out to other investigative reporters around the world to take on the same stories and follow them to their true conclusions.

Because we thought that the stories should not die with the people.

So by murdering Daphne, her killers are multiplying theumber of reporters on the case.

Attracting even more attention to her work and her stories, and seeing if those stories might yield clues as to who wanted her dead, who the real mister allegit mastermind might be. The journalists that forbidden stories called their new journalistic coalition the Deafnite Project, and they start by digging deep into Dafnie's archive of old investigations.

When Dafnit was killed, this was the natural thing to do after that was to say, okay, this is the first case. This is what we have to do. Now, this is our case. Let's try to assemble a team of journalists. Let's go to Marta. Let's try to tell her story. Let's try to see that the people who killed her and who wanted her stories to die, that they don't get away with that, that the stories are still going to see the light of day, and that they're going to be punished.

The hope of the Deafney project is that clues to her murder might lie in some of the stories she investigated, and it turned out that hunch was correct. Within her blog posts there is in fact a faint trail leading to the likely masterminds of her murder, and mister allegit mastermind in particular.

Feb Second, twenty sixteen. If the Panama hat fits, wear it.

But the clues are deeply buried. I remember when Dafney published this blog post eighteen months before her death, the start of her most famous story. It was typical of her sense of mischief, being deliberately mysterious, playing with her public, and it worked. You'd be repeatedly checking the block throughout the day to see if all had been revealed on the surface. This post strangely seemed to be all about hats.

Conrad Mitzi has found a hat that fits him.

It includes a large stop photo of a Panama hat, a kind of straw some hat. The text is made up of cryptic and sarcastic messages about a government minister called Conrad Mitzi, Walter's Health and Energy minister.

Take this as a genuine warning, I am not at liberty to say more for the time being, because if I were then rest assured that I would.

Twenty minutes later I definitely posted another puzzle. This one had a picture of acute lamb and a few paragraphs wandering out loud whether mister Mitzi would be eating New Zealand lamb at Easter.

When I say I have an international, worldwide network of spies, I'm not quite joking, but sadly I can't say more for now, though I'm bursting.

Too hats lambs. The government minister the truth was definitely had got access to an incredible scoope through her son Matthew's work. You might remember the Panama Papers, a huge global story where millions of confidential finds from a secret of firm in Panama were leaked to the press. What we now know is that Daphanie had got an early viewing.

The Panama Papers were a huge deal for the kind of work I do, investigations into corrupt regimes. They gave us a roadmap to the complex global arrangements that super wealthy individuals use to keep their wealth secret, how rich crooks avoid taxes and sanctions and money laundering investigations and journalists with questions. In my work on Putins Russia, the publication of the papers was a game changer, one of those rare times where for a moment, a whole hidden world is revealed.

One hundred and forty three politicians from around the world were featured in the files, including twelve national leaders, from the then Prime Minister of Iceland to the then President of Ukraine. But it wasn't just politicians. There were bureaucrats, businessmen, minor royalty, even the Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan.

Of course, having a name churned up in the Panama Papers does not necessarily mean that the person committed a crime, but it does raise some interesting questions about what they're doing with these secretive accounts. And the country of Panama was significant because it was a tax haven with little regulation, a place which tends not to share financial information with most other countries, a place where you can park assets away from prying eyes.

And Deafney's sneak preview revealed that the Panama Papers included significant information about Malta too. Health and Energy Minister Mitzi was featured in detail. Definitely had discovered that immediately after being elected, mister Mitzi had created an elaborate financial arrangement designed for secretly stashing assets outside Molta, a trust in New Zealand containing a company based in Panama. Layers upon layers, hence the references to New Zealand lamb and the Panama hat.

The global financial equivalent of buying a brand new piggybank and stashing it in a very very secret place, all on the day you get a new job.

February twenty fourth, twenty sixteen. Conrad Mitzi's so called shell company was never declared to Parliament in his annual declaration of assets as a government minister, not in twenty thirteen, not in twenty fourteen, and not in twenty fifteen. And if he had told you that he had incorporated it in Panama, the many hundreds of people who work in financial services in Malta and the entire political class would know exactly why he did this.

These are expensive bigurebanks. They cost money to set up and cost money to run. It would make absolutely no sense for someone to use an arrangement like this on the other side of the world to store a nor mil government salary, even a minister salary. This figure bank was built for something larger.

No accountant or financial consultant would ever advise a client to incorporate a company in Panama if there are no extraordinarily significant assets to hold, and beyond that, assets which the client wishes to conceal from the authorities back home. Conrad Mitzi is in government now, but he is not going to be in government forever.

And daphnely didn't stop with mister Mitzi.

February twenty seventh, twenty sixteen. Breaking now, Conrad Mitzi and PM's chief of staff Schmbrie have exactly the same asset concealing structures in blacklisted Panama.

Remember Teach Cambrie, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, the man who would later meet Melvin the Middleman for a dodgy job and a selfie.

The Panama Papers revealed that he also had a secret piggybank ready to be filled up.

The agreements that made Schambrie beneficiary of his trust and Mitzi's settler and protector of his were submitted together on the same date.

The same date, which is to say, immediately after the Labor Party in Malta, one power suggesting that this might be a shared and coordinated effort to provide senior government figures with a place to keep extra earnings, almost a perk of the job.

There was a third asset concealing structure revealed by Dafne another pigabank set up at the same time for a third individual, but in this case those involved had covered their tracks even better, That individual's name was not put in writing anyone in the paperwork that has been made public. One email says that the name will be communicated veribally over a Skype video call.

I mean nothing says honest democratic government like a secret financial arrangement owned by a person whose name can't be put in riting.

Yeah, probably not. An arrangement at your High Street bank account would allow discovering the secret identity of the unknown third person. The man or woman whose name couldn't be written down became a campaign in itself.

So I think there's something we should address here. For me, the complexity of all these arrangements companies in Central America structures from New Zealand bank accounts without names is something that makes this kind of story really hard to report on. And yet the secret bribes and kickbacks that politicians take and businessmen give affect all our lives more than we

Which company is within, which trust or paid for? Which are holding vehicle?

And when I've realized this, none of this confusion, this fog machine is an accident. It's the whole point. The fog machine is wired to confuse the people who pay to hide their ill gotten gains. This way, they want investigators, reporters in the public to lose the thread, to get confused, and to get bored, to give up, and to turn

And that is exactly how it feels trying to pin down corruption in my country. You know it's there, sometimes you see something yourself, but so much complexity has been created around it that it's very hard to see the whole picture. And that was Deafney's genius and what made her so dangerous to certain people. She had the ability to dispel the confusion, to lay it out in terms that everyone could understand, and that gave the offenders nowhere

It's almost tangible in a sense.

Here's Nicole Maelak, a journalist at the Multa Today newspaper. She was at university at the time. Definitely published the Panama stories.

Everyone was talking about this because how can you not talk about it when you have a minister your chief of staff implicated and having sort of these shady accounts and Panama everyone's talking about it.

The opposition party called Defnie Discoveries the biggest scandal and Maltese political history and anti corruption protest marches were held in the capital. Definitely attended as a hero.

It didn't feel right to even like go to a university lecture because I remember going to university lecture and the mood was there. We couldn't do this lecture because all this was happening there was such a monumental sort of crisis.

For a moment it looked as though possibly the whole government might fall. But Prime Minister Joseph Mouscat didn't do what Defni and the protesters were asking for. He didn't cave. Instead, he stood firm.

It raised eyebrows. Obviously on one hand, it's like, what are they trying to hide? Like have you having secrets companies and Panama's definitely not on when you're when you're a sing minister. The Prime Minister at the time didn't exactly them to resign or anything.

Conrad Mitzi at first claimed that he had done nothing wrong in creating the Panama and New Zealand financial arrangements, but later admitted that he had not declared the arrangements properly, a breach of Multie law. His explanations for his intentions and aims continued to evolve, sometimes in contradictory ways. He eventually apologized in Parliament for his actions. In the spring of twenty sixteen, Mitzi was moved to a different cabinet post.

When someone accuses you of a great crime, you don't deny it. You switch on the fog machine. You create multiple versions of reality. Some masses of people get confused, and within those versions you get your creatures to deny it. Take Stalin's man made famine in nineteen thirty three, which kills so many people. No one to this day knows

And like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Joseph Muscat went on the attack. Pro government blogs and TV shows focused even more intensively on demonizing Daphne as an enemy of not just the government but of Malta itself. One recurring theme in pro government TV and radio was to describe or depict her as a witch, an evil older women

March second, twenty sixteen, excuse my language. Here, but nothing else will suffice in this ridiculous situation. Total bollocks. Why don't these just go on themselves? How I got the information is irrelevant. What counts is the information itself. These asset concealing structures, once open and totally secret, could be used for the receipt of bribes, kickbacks and backhanders. Give up, it's over, big time.

Sadly, it wasn't over. It was only just the beginning. But somewhere in Malta, Daphne's future killer, mister alleged Mastermind, was already taking notes. She'd got closer to his interests than she realized.

To understand a little better just what definitely was discovering about this country. And so just a little trip to a beach in the north of Molta, a beach with a view of an island with a lot of history.

So beautiful day. There's an island with barely a building on it, and just the chop there's an old kind of medieval citadel. Manuel, tell me this island in the middle.

What's it called so?

And what is it is called? Camuna? Probably a corruption of cumin. Maybe it used to grow there. It's an island right in the middle of the channel between the larger island of the Motese archipelago, Malta and the smaller one, Gozo.

So why do you're checking me here? There's some kind of historical metaphor you're about to hit me over the head with.

I know you I am. So you see on the side of the island. You see how the sea has eroded caves into the island, And that used to be for some time in the sixteenth especially the seventeenth, but in the eighteenth centuries a hideout for pirates. They'd be hiding stuff there. In any case, it was a pirate cove, a place of shelter.

Okay, So I get the history lesson, But why exactly if you check me here today?

Because I think this story from two three hundred years ago anticipates a bit what happens now. We still have treasures that need hiding, and the caves of today are a little bit different. So if you think trusts and financial instruments and offshore banking is complicated, just think of a dark cave.

It's a good place to hide it.

Yeah, it's a good place to hide for a while. Let the waters come down. People look away, and then you can come out in the middle of the night and take the stuff where you want it. You're parking, you're stolen stuff for a while, keep it hidden, and then bring it out when it's safe to do so.

Aha. So listen, I mean, if we went across and found these eighteenth century caves, you'd hear an echo, and there's an echo of the past. So the whole country, the whole archipelago, is a place where there are echoes from the past. And if you listen carefully enough to those echoes from the past, I tell you something about now the twenty first century. More they do time for an ice cream.

So years after the Panama Paper scandal, after Dafnie's death, after the Definite Projects send up their bet signal for other international journalists to start investigating her stories, Bastiano Bermeyer and the Definitey Project team find they had a problem Malta, too many pirates and too many hidden caves to look into.

The big problem that we were facing in Morta after Dughness murder was that there were so many people who would want her dad essentially where to start, which is a crazy thing for this small island. So when we looked around and we thought would have a motive. You know, easily we counted to four or five, six very influential figures who did have a good motive to want her dad.

This is the same culture shop for I experienced when I first learned about this story. And in fact we know that mister alleged Mastermind used this idea to try and reassure Melvin the Middleman at times, telling him that Definitely had offended so many people that they would never find the real killers.

The biggest issue was that we were following four or five stories at the same time, and literally each of those stories could have been the one that was responsibly the end for her killing, because one of the persons involved in that story would have said, it's enough now, we need to stop her now for good.

But the scale of the task didn't deter the Definite Project's investigators. Teams from the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, newspaper, Francis Paper of Record, Lamonde, and Italy's La Republica, the news agency Reuters and others were all digging at the same time.

And they did make progress. Stories that Definitely had hinted that were developed and taken further investigations into a corrupt scheme to allow wealthy foreigners to buy mult citizenship, for example, and revelations about corrupt gas fials with the ruling elite in Azerbaijan.

In virtually every major policy initiative that was launched by Joseph Moscart's government after it came to power in twenty thirteen, Deafney reported shady dealings. Considered Defnie's reporting on the transfer of the management of some of Molta's public hospitals to private operators. Basically, the government would pay the salaries for medical staff and pay the new managers a daily fee

Jafneg denounced the scheme as a sham, a cover for some behind the scenes swindle. She didn't have all the details, but as usual, her intuition was on the money to coin a phrase. By the time she was killed, the hospitals had got barely a fresh lick of paint. Wards were abandoned, doors collapsed, roofs leaked. Months after Daphney was killed, the mysterious managers of the hospitals went bust. The governments had a contractual right to claim the hospital's back, but they didn't do that.

No, the faceless and ostensibly bankrupt managers of the hospitals were allowed to sell the concession on. The new managers would be a recognized healthcare brand from America.

Did the hospitals get their fresh lick of paint?

Barely a drop? That's at the same time as between them, the first private hospital managers and their American successors collected nearly half a billion euro in payments from the mortis authorities.

In those first six months after Daphne was killed, reporters from the Daphne Project found the stories about passports for crooks, blindingly expensive gas steals, and abandoned hospitals interesting, to be sure, but there was nothing that pointed clearly to the real culprit in Daphne's murder. For now, mister alleged mastermind could rest easy. The stalemate must have been frustrating for the Daphne Project and Daphne's other supporters like you Manuel.

It was it almost seemed that the grand strategy of Daphne's family to use international pressure and international journalism to find Daphne's killer was leading nowhere. On that one measure, the bat signal hadn't worked. But there was one question that hadn't yet been explored, and it also concerned the Panama Papers. Daphanie's reporting had proved that two senior government ministers and another unnamed person had all simultaneously created elaborate

The strain of keeping this murder secret is beginning to tell, and the once unimaginable betrayal is now coming.

That's next.

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 senior producer is Leo Hornack. The producer is Maddie Hickish. Krish Denesh Kumar is the assistant producer. The story editors are Emma Federill, Matt Willis, and Philippa Geering.