Melvin Theuma, the self-confessed middleman who was granted a presidential pardon in exchange for his evidence, took the stand on the 33rd day of the trial against Yorgen Fenech. 

Over several hours, he set out a timeline of Caruana Galizia’s assassination as he describes it: the conversation in which he says Fenech first raised her killing, the €150,000 he says was agreed with the men who carried it out, the payments that continued for two years afterwards, and his decision to begin secretly recording Fenech.

Fenech denies the charges against him.

Theuma opened with an apology. “I would like to say sorry to the Caruana Galizia family,” he said.

He broke down in the witness box throughout the sitting, no more so than when he described the day of Daphne’s murder:

“I was going about my life normally. I went to get a pizza, and then it happened. From that day onwards, my life was over. When they blew her up, that was it for me.”

“Daphne died because we killed her.”

He told jurors he had contacted both Matthew and Paul Caruana Galizia, and said they continue to show him support.

The friendship that led to an assassination

Theuma’s relationship with the Fenech family began with Yorgen’s uncle, Ray, from whom he rented an office. At the time, Theuma worked as a bookmaker in horse racing and ran an illegal lottery.

He first met Yorgen Fenech, he said, after being called to drive him in one of his cars at his father’s funeral.

“[Yorgen] got me into Portomaso in around 2015, and he and I became inseparable. In 2017, I adored and respected him. I’d say yes to him for everything.”

“He would call me and say: let’s go to France. He would pay for everything, hotel, travel. Can you have a better friendship than that?”

“He was Malta’s champion when it came to business, an entrepreneur; he knew people, the big names, and so on.”

”Once, I was with him in the car at Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were calling him. Even Beppe Fenech Adami, but he didn’t take his call because he said he was a pest.”

The Plot to Murder Daphne

Theuma said the conversation that began the plot took place at the Blue Elephant restaurant, roughly three weeks before the 2017 general election.

In 2017, Yorgen called me and said: can you come over to the Blue Elephant? We need to talk. He asked me if I knew iċ-Ċiniż [George Degiorgio] from Marsa. I told him yes. He said: see what you can do; let’s get hold of him, we’re going to murder Caruana Galizia because of some information that’s going to come out. I told him I would see what I could do.”

Theuma said he knew Alfred Degiorgio, George’s brother, having rented a flat from him years earlier, but lost contact when Alfred was jailed for three years.

Theuma called Alfred and told him he needed to meet him. They met at the Potato Shed in Marsa.

“I told him: I have someone who wants to pay to have Daphne Caruana Galizia murdered. He said, is he going to pay? I said, obviously. I never mentioned names,” Theuma said.

“I told him let’s meet at Busy Bee in Msida. We met there, and he told me the price was €150,000 with a €30,000 deposit. Yorgen told me he was interested and would get back to me. The government announced the election, and he told me to stop everything.”

“To save face, I gave Alfred €2,000.”

Both Degiorgio brothers have since pleaded guilty to carrying out the murder.

The Phantom Job

Theuma said that two days after the payment to Alfred Degiorgio, he was at Burger King with his son when Fenech called to tell him that a man named Sandro Craus would be in touch.

Craus, he said, called the next day and told him to be at Castille at 3pm to meet Keith Schembri, then chief of staff to prime minister Joseph Muscat. Theuma said Schembri met him on the steps and he entered through the front entrance. It was during that meeting that the now widely published photograph of the two men was taken.

“I don’t know why we took the photo. We just did. Then we moved over to a window, and he told me that I needed to go to a certain ministry because I had a job with the government.”

“Then they took me into a small room for an interview. There were three people there who told me to register with Jobsplus, and I went straight away. They asked me whether I knew how to use email, and I told them yes, but I don’t.”

“The second and the third cheque came by post, and the first one by hand. I received about three or four cheques. When they stopped, I called Yorgen, and he called them. I was told that I would need to start coming in, and I told them I wouldn’t.”

Schembri gave evidence in this trial last week and denied arranging the post or knowing why Theuma was sent to him.

The Go-Ahead

Theuma said Fenech asked him to place a €150,000 bet on Labour winning the election.

“On the Saturday of the election, Yorgen called me to stand outside Keith’s door because he needed a bodyguard. But I didn’t go.”

“On the Sunday, Labour won, and Yorgen won €150,000, so I needed to give him €300,000,” he said, referring to the returned stake and the winnings. “He then called me and brought up Daphne’s business. I could tell he had had a drink and was celebrating. Yorgen told me to get the plan moving.”

Theuma said he took no action, assuming Fenech was drunk. He delivered the €300,000 to Fenech’s ranch, and nothing was said. About two weeks after the election, he said, Fenech called him to Portomaso.

“I was waiting for him, and then he opened the boot, opened a suitcase and took out an envelope full of €50 notes. I asked him what these were and he said they were for Daphne.”

Theuma said he told Fenech he had not started anything because he had thought he was drunk. He took the money home, divided €30,000 into three envelopes and met Alfred Degiorgio at Busy Bee.

“I went inside and told him: there you are, you can start.”

Yorgen’s pressure to murder Daphne

“From the day after I gave Alfred the go-ahead, [Yorgen] started pestering me constantly. If the information came out, it’ll have been for nothing… she’ll have died for nothing.”

“He was frantic. He’d tell me on WhatsApp; in the car on the way to the airport, he’d also say to me, when is he going to get rid of her?”

“He would ask me every four days. Once, he even sent me a message saying he’d get the champagne ready; maybe it’ll happen today.”

“One time, Yorgen told me: make sure they don’t use a bomb on her, and it ends up like Romeo Bone’s, and they only take her legs off.”

“Right up until the murder, I never knew how they were going to kill her.”

Theuma said Fenech passed on information about where Caruana Galizia could be found during a period when the men lost track of her movements. He named two locations he said he relayed to Alfred Degiorgio, and said the men gave him two cheap burner phones to communicate with them.

He said Alfred Degiorgio did not take kindly to the pressure. “They told me they needed time.”

“Alfred took me up to Bidnija once. There’s a sort of collapsed rubble wall there and a tree, and he told me that they were watching her from there.”

“Once he told me what bad luck we had, and there was a roadblock; otherwise they would have done it. I once called Alfred in front of Yorgen.”

On 3 October 2017, Theuma travelled to France with his family, taking one of the phones with him.

“In October, I didn’t speak to Alfred once. I couldn’t get through to him. When she died, I threw the phone away.”

16 October

Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb in Bidnija on 16 October 2017. Theuma said he learned of her death from the television.

Theuma then began to cry, lamenting how the murder impacted him.

“I was going about my life normally. I went to get a pizza, and then it happened. From that day onwards, my life was over. When they blew her up, that was it for me.”

“I didn’t know what was happening. When I was arrested and giving my statement to police, they asked me: do you realise she was a mother? A wife? I still can’t take it. I even asked her children for forgiveness. I’m a fool. The remorse I carry, nobody can take away from me.”

“Once I saw the news I was scared they would catch me. I was shaking. Full of dread. God, if only I were still as I was; go and get those days back.”

Payments, leaks and a will

The day after the murder, Theuma said, he asked to meet Fenech and was told to go to Level 21 in Portomaso, where he also met Turab Musayev, a director at ElectroGas. There is no suggestion that Musayev had any knowledge of the murder.

“I knew him from taxi rides. I was put in a room at the back. I told him I was scared because the FBI were coming. He asked me why, since the FBI would still be working with Maltese police.”

About a week later, Theuma said, he ran into Vince Muscat, who has also pleaded guilty to carrying out the murder, and told him he needed to speak to George Degiorgio. The men met him at a garage in Wied il-Għajn.

There, Theuma told jurors, he handed over €125,000 in €50 notes,

Theuma said Fenech later told him the men were in trouble because investigators had recovered the message that triggered the bomb, and that a large raid was coming in December. He said Fenech did not explain where the information came from.

“I went and found Alfred. I told him that they were in trouble, but he told me not to take any notice.”

“[On the raid] I asked him if I should tell them. He told me: yes, of course.”

“When I met Alfred, he told me that he would never give my name up, not even in another 125 years, and I hugged him.”

After the December arrests, Theuma said, Fenech gave him pills for anxiety, which he combined with whisky. He made a will dated 7 December 2017.

Theuma said he sent €300 a week between the three men in custody, routed through Lorry Pace, who gave evidence to the same effect earlier in the trial.

 “I was scared they would give my name up. I started it on my own initiative. I told Yorgen, but he took no notice of it.”

“I thought [Yorgen] would kill me. I have never given up his name…If he killed me, he would have nothing to worry about. The hitmen would never expose Yorgen because I never mentioned him.”

“Between 2018 and 2019, Yorgen saw me in a bad way and gave me €5,000 to go on holiday with my family.”

The money through Mario

In March 2018, the same month Vince Muscat began speaking to police, Theuma said he was contacted by the Degiorgio brothers through their brother Mario, who told him the two men needed €30,000 for a lawyer. Fenech provided the funds, Theuma said, and he passed them on.

Further requests followed. Mario asked for another €30,000 and offered to leave gold and watches as a guarantee; Fenech said the guarantee was not needed and provided €25,000, with Theuma making up the remaining €5,000 himself.

Subsequent requests ranged between €2,000 and €3,000 and covered legal costs, school fees, and other family expenses, including the costs of Italian experts engaged for the two brothers. On one occasion, Mario asked for €15,000 in connection with money-laundering proceedings against Anka Pop, George Degiorgio’s partner.

One time, Mario gave Theuma several receipts, dated between January and May 2018, from their lawyer, William Cuschieri, totalling €70,000. Theuma kept the receipts and gave them to investigators upon his arrest. “Maro gave it to me to show where the money was going and to be able to ask for more money”.

Fenech, Theuma said, always provided the funds, sometimes reimbursing him afterwards. The payments continued until shortly before his arrest: Fenech’s brother Franco, he said, passed on €20,000 on the Monday before 14 November 2019.

“One time, Mario told me that George wanted to tell me: stop worrying about outside, worry about the people on the inside.”

“Like they murdered Daphne, they could murder me too.”

Vince Muscat

Theuma described a night when Fenech called him to the ranch and told him that Vince Muscat was speaking to the police.

“We’re going to have problems. Vince is speaking to police about you and the Degiorgio brothers. I told him I only spoke to Alfred about it. He told me: I’m certain they’re naming you. He told me to tell the Degiorgio brothers. I went to tell Mario.”

“Yorgen never told me [where the information came from], but later I found out who was passing him the information. The recordings are clear.”

In the recordings, Theuma said Fenech names Keith Schembri and then deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta. Schembri denied tipping anyone off when he testified last week. Valletta has previously denied passing information to Fenech.

That evening, Theuma said Fenech told him to start using Signal because messages would be deleted automatically.

“The next day, I tried calling Jason Azzopardi because I wanted to reveal everything. I told him I wanted to speak to him about ‘the big case’. He was abroad. I was drinking. He told me to call Karol Aquilina, but I got scared and didn’t want to speak to him.”

Later the same day, Theuma said, Fenech messaged him telling him to speak to the Maksar brothers because Vince Muscat was naming them as having supplied the bomb. The message was shown to jurors.

Cremona, Camilleri and the Bail Request

Theuma’s evidence turned to Johann Cremona, a business partner of Fenech who also leased an office from him and whom Theuma also recorded. Cremona introduced him to Kenneth Camilleri, then serving on Joseph Muscat’s security detail at the Office of the Prime Minister.

“Johann called me at around 7.30pm to 8pm. He told me that he was coming to speak to me. I found him with a certain Kenneth Camilleri. He was a policeman and Muscat’s driver. I knew him by sight through Johann.”

“Kenneth came to speak to me on his own. Johann remained far back. He suddenly asked me about Yorgen. I told him that the Degiorgios and Muscat would need bail. He left for a bit, made a phone call, and when he came back, he told me that [the Degiorgio brothers] would get bail on the 22nd and that each would get €1 million. I assumed it was Keith Schembri on the phone.”

“I picked up Yorgen from the airport soon after, and I started recording him. In those recordings, even Yorgen himself says that it was Keith who sent him.”

“I told Mario about the bail. I believed Kenneth. I wouldn’t understand why he would lie. Mario was so happy.”

“The next day, I went to Johann’s and Kenneth arrived. Kenneth brought up a paper with three numbers, one of them was mine. He told me those numbers were of the masterminds of Daphne’s murder. I looked at him and told him, Yorgen is the mastermind. He paid for it. He wanted it. He continued asking for it to happen.”

Camilleri testified earlier in this trial and denied that Schembri had sent him, and denied any involvement in a bail arrangement.

The recordings

Theuma said he began recording Fenech after the December arrests.

“Once Fenech had mentioned to me that someone recorded him and he was annoyed by it. But it gave me the idea, and I asked my partner’s daughter how I could do it.”

“I started recording Yorgen because I needed the proof. I knew they were going to betray me either by killing me or throwing me in jail. He told me how Keith Schembri would go into the fire for him.”

“I was scared that Keith Schembri would tell the police to delete the recordings.”

He said he confided in Edwin ‘il-Gojja’ Brincat, whom he described as being like a father to him, and with whom he discussed seeking a pardon.

“I had to tell him. I told him about the recordings. And he told me I was crazy because Yorgen was powerful. He told me that I threw my life away. He was right.”

“I felt it was better to be dead than alive.”

Theuma said he was meeting Cremona almost daily. “Johann was an in-between for Yorgen and me. I couldn’t speak to Yorgen about it. I didn’t have the guts to talk to Yorgen like how I could speak to Johann.”

The only people who knew about the recordings, he said, were his partner, Brincat and Cremona. Cremona, who testified last month, told the court he had informed Fenech.

“That night, I told Yorgen I would bring the recordings. I never did. We continued speaking as normal. He told me he was angry, but it was ok. I was never going to give them to him. They were my life.”

He said he showed Fenech only snippets. Brincat, he said, warned him that without the recordings he was dead, and installed an alarm in his car to detect a bomb.

The trial continues tomorrow.