Yorgen Fenech’s statement to police was played to jurors, in which he admitted passing hundreds of thousands of euros to the middleman Melvin Theuma, but insisted it was extortion and that it was Keith Schembri who orchestrated the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia

The recordings cover two days of questioning by Superintendent Kurt Zahra at police headquarters, beginning on 29 November 2019 and continuing through the following day. In the first, Fenech is wearing a black polo-neck sweater and black trousers, sitting in a fluorescent-lit interrogation room. In the second, he sports a white shirt and navy blazer. 

‘Everything started with Keith Schembri’

“Everything started with Keith Schembri. It’s a disgrace that I’m sitting here today and not Mr Keith Schembri. The police are doing everything, everything, to shield him,” Fenech tells investigators at the start of the tape. He said he offered evidence on corruption, but police refused to hear him.

He claimed three people came to know that Schembri had wanted Daphne murdered: then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Johann Cremona and Adrian Vella. He was insistent on the qualification, repeating it in both sessions: none of the three knew beforehand, only afterwards.

“I was commissioned by Keith Schembri, who had been long asking to find someone to murder him because she was a nuisance…and not just for him…since 2014,” he said.

Schembri, Fenech told investigators, was angry with Daphne’s articles – and had even told him that he had paid “someone” €30,000 to have her murdered in 2015. That plan never materialised, but Fenech said that Schembri continued to pester him to “find somebody”.

“He was pushing for this murder. I was never the one who sent [anyone] or did anything. [Those three people] know Keith Schembri’s involvement from A to Z,” Genech said later in interrogation.

The plot, according to Fenech

The issue came up again over a meal at Fenech’s ranch in Ħaż-Żebbuġ, weeks after he and Schembri had returned from a trip to the United States. Theuma was among the guests. Driving him home afterwards, Fenech said, Theuma told him: “We’ll get rid of her quickly.”

Fenech told police that days later, on the way to the airport, Theuma said he had spoken to a “clique” of friends who were ready to do it and already had a plan.

“I had no interest in knowing who they were,” Fenech said. He told Theuma he would get back to him, and put it to Schembri, who told him: “Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead” (mexxi mexxi mexxi). On the drive back from the airport, Theuma told him his share would be €120,000.

Asked repeatedly whether he had paid it, Fenech said only that he would answer “at the opportune moment”. He disputed Theuma’s figures outright: “The figures are wrong too, because it was 120 and not 150. It went up to 150 afterwards.”

“After two days, I told Theuma to stop everything. I gave him €50,000 and told him to take it, but I told them it wasn’t for the job because I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He told me he had paid for it himself…but that’s not why I gave them to him.”

“I gave them to him because he told me he was under obligation to these people, and I am not into these sorts of things… he had told me that he took 30k out of his own pocket… and to be honest I didn’t know who they were, and I told him ‘I will give you more, but I don’t want to have anything to do with it’…”Fenech said.

“Did you know that the money he committed to was for Daphne’s murder?’ Zahra asked. “ From what he told me, obviously…” Fenech replied.

‘Are you aware of any other money to have Daphne killed?’ Zahra asked. “We will discuss those later because I’m not feeling comfortable,” Fenech replied.

Fenech Rejects Melvin Theuma’s Timeline, Evidence Backs Theuma 

Fenech was then confronted with Theuma’s timeline, namely the meeting at Blue Elephant where, according to Theuma, he first ordered the assassination of Daphne.

Fenech was asked directly about Theuma’s timeline – and whether he ordered the murder in early 2017 after Daphne’s blog post mentioning 17 Black. Fenech denied it outright. “I will say it again…no,” Fenech said, insisting that the murder was planned towards the end of 2016. “I just gave [Melvin] the money,” he added.

He denied Theuma’s entire timeline – that the murder was first planned in April 2017, put on hold once the election was called, and then restarted after the Labour Party won the election. He rejected Theuma’s testimony that he provided the money to the hitmen and the steps taken towards the murder.

He insisted that he did not know Daphne – and denied that the murder had anything to do with 17 Black. “The allegation was with John Dalli,” he said.

Zahra later noted that evidence shows that the murder plot began in 2017; this includes the burner phones used by the hitmen being purchased – and recorded conversations and messages between Fenech and Theuma.

Payments to the Hitmen

Fenech was asked about his payments to the hitmen via Theuma.

“Melvin Theuma told you that the Degiorgios and Vince Muscat were asking him for money after their arrest. He would tell you they needed the money – and you would give him the money,” Zahra said. “Yes…but not necessarily, as he was passing them the Degiorgio’s brother.”

Asked why Theuma kept coming to him for money, Fenech said Theuma told him the executors were asking him to cover expenses.

Pressed on why Theuma came to him, he said: “Because he was blackmailing me.” Asked how, he refused to answer, saying repeatedly that he would respond “at the opportune moment and the appropriate stage”; a formula he used dozens of times across the two days whenever the questions turned to the money.

“I’ve been through an ordeal for more than two years – Melvin kept coming to me for money. Once, I was so drained that I called Keith Schembri and told him I’m exhausted. He said, ‘Now I’ll get something; I’ll put up something myself, because this isn’t right’. He brought me a Reebok bag to the office with between €75,000 and €85,000 in it.”

He did confirm, though, that he had passed on money to Theuma, saying outright that he provided at least “€400,000” to Theuma, as part of payments to the hitmen while in prison, but again insisted that Theuma was blackmailing him. “I was scared that he was blackmailing me over my drug addiction. He’s a really disgusting person….I was scared, but I’ll tell you why at an opportune moment.”

“But why did you do it?” Fenech was asked again. “I did it to protect Keith Schembri… these are the worst people in Malta,” Fenech said. “Melvin was blackmailing me because he recorded me. He threatened me. He said he would go to Castille, that he would go to Mellieha, to Keith’s house. Once I found it near Portomaso, where my kids would be picked up from school. And another time, with a gun on a table.”

Allegations of blackmail and threats

Fenech told police that Theuma once threatened him with a firearm. He said that Theuma had boasted about “a book of recordings on you” on “Fenech. There aren’t just one or two of them,” Fenech said, adding that there were times he knew he was being recorded and times he did not.

“So you knew you were being recorded, and you never told him to put the weapon down?” Zahra asked. ”Do you understand what it means to be blackmailed?” Fenech replied. “I’m not someone who scares easily, but I’m not that type; I don’t have that stomach. I have two small children, I have a life, and I was scared. Very scared. And that’s why I was also afraid for Keith Schembri and tried to protect him as much as I could – I didn’t want him to come face to face with those people.”

“Didn’t you say anything to him when he got out the gun?” Zahra asked. “You weren’t in my shoes,” Fenech replied.

Zahra later said police investigated the allegation. He reiterated that Fenech never mentioned the threats he was receiving in the recordings – and that Fenech continued to use Theuma as a driver for himself, his wife and his two young children.

Confronted with the recordings & Keith Schembri claims

Yorgen Fenech was confronted with a series of recordings. “I never heard the recordings Melvin gave me. Honestly, I don’t remember,” he said.

The primary two were: “Whoever arranged the thing has less trouble than whoever did it.”  and “you took the person from A to Z”

“Who were you referring to?” Zahra asked. “Keith Schembri,” Fenech replied. “We will talk at a more advanced stage because I know where you are heading”.

Explaining the conversation, Fenech told Zahra that Johann Cremona was brought into the post-murder plot by Keith Schembri.

“[Johann] told me that this Kenneth [Camilleri, then-Joseph Muscat’s security guard] had promised certain things to Melvin on behalf of Keith Schembri. Who is, in fact, the same person who brought me into it, Keith Schembri. The same thing,” Fenech said, adding that it was Cremona who informed him that he was being recorded.

Another key phrase Yorgen Fenech is confronted with is: “What do you expect me to do, go before the judge and tell him I did it?” Zahra said that was Yorgen admitting to the murder, but Fenech insisted he was just joking.

“In all the recordings, you never mentioned Keith; rather, you are taking responsibility…” Zahra said. “No, no, it never started with me…I never mentioned him because I was protecting him…” Fenech replied.

Asked directly by Zahra why he never mentioned Schembri as the person who commissioned the murder in any of the recordings, Fenech said:

“Keith Schembri was like my brother. I loved him and respected him like my brother. I protected him from Melvin Theuma – and those recordings confirm that. I did everything I could to protect Keith Schembri, right up until last Sunday, when he passed me that script. He spoke to me from Girgenti and told me, ‘Rest assured, with this script you’ll get a pardon’ – and since I didn’t get it, I feel betrayed. My word is not a contract or a pact, so I no longer feel bound by it.”

Zahra put it to him that by never naming Schembri he had effectively “committed suicide”. “Of course I committed suicide,” Fenech replied. “Because I had honour, I had honour.

When Zahra said his account was “laughable”, Fenech accused the police of following “the State’s script – for Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat”. “Bring in Joseph Muscat, bring him in, and we’ll see if it’s true. Confront him with me. This is my life. It’s not your life, it’s my life.”

The Castille job, Leaks, the alleged cover-up

Fenech claimed Theuma knew of Schembri’s involvement, and that Schembri had arranged a government job for him to keep him quiet.

“When he started threatening me, I told Keith, and Keith said, ‘Send him to me at Castille’. Melvin Theuma went to Castille and was given a government job…a job he never turned up for. On the same day, Keith Schembri and Melvin Theuma had a photo taken together inside Castille, arm in arm. Melvin brought me that photo to threaten me, and it stayed in my office.”

“Melvin Theuma knew that Schembri… it wasn’t a coincidence that he wrote his name in the note…that he gave Theuma a job in Castille after the murder to keep his mouth shut,” Fenech says in the tape. 

In court, Zahra said that detail showed Fenech’s inconsistencies, since Theuma was given the job months before the assassination.

“I was given details from Keith Schembri that il-Koħħu (Vince Muscat) was negotiating a pardon. I told Keith that Melvin didn’t believe it. I didn’t know Kenneth Camilleri, but it turned out he was Joseph Muscat’s driver. Keith confirmed to me that he sent Kenneth. I told Keith that Melvin was panicking – and then he told me that our mobile phones were wiretapped.”

Fenech told investigators that Schembri had even once planned to kill Theuma and had even sent Kenneth Camilleri to do it, but had stopped when Theuma was present with his son. “Theuma didn’t trust Schembri because of the bail pledge”.

He added that Schembri provided him with extensive information on the murder investigation, including Theuma’s arrest. He confirmed that he was the one to inform Theuma that he, his partner and stepdaughter would be arrested. 

He also confirmed that he gave Theuma a copy of his pardon, which he said Schembri handed to him. He said the copy was with his lawyer. Dr Marion Camilleri, one of his lawyers, interjected twice, saying she had been present and could testify to it.

Investigators told him Europol was searching his computer and phone to trace how the document reached him. “Did he send it to me by ghost?” Fenech asked, before adding that it came “over Signal; it disappears.”.

Joseph Muscat 

Fenech alleged that in January 2019, he was summoned to Castille, along with Keith Schembri. There, Muscat asked whether he knew Melvin Theuma and whether Schembri’s name appeared in his secret recordings. Muscat, Fenech said, also told him that Theuma’s arrest was “inevitable”, that Europol were listening, and it would happen by June.

He went further, telling police that Muscat had twice warned him about the investigation and told him to “keep Melvin Theuma in check”, and that the Prime Minister “obviously had an interest in protecting Keith”. Fenech said he reassured Muscat: “Rest assured that as much as possible I’m keeping him out. I’m keeping him out as much as I can, Prim. But more than that I couldn’t do.”

“[Joseph Muscat] knew because he sent for me once, and another time I was at his birthday party at Girgenti [In 2019]. And as I was walking into Girgenti for the party, he met me upstairs, and he spoke to me.”

“He spoke to me about Melvin Theuma and asked me, “This guy is talking a lot of nonsense,” and he told me how much stuff he has on Keith, and I reassured him and told him: “Rest assured that I am protecting Keith as much as possible, etc., etc.”

“He told me: Something definitely has to be done about this guy; a raid definitely has to be carried out on him because there is a lot of pressure from abroad, etc. Make sure you control him so that when they go after him and carry out the raid, they don’t find anything, etc.”

“At the opportune moment, I’ll go into more detail.” However, Zahra explained that messages between Fenech and Muscat showed that they did not actually communicate in person that day.

At the second meeting, Fenech said Muscat called for him personally to come to Castille. He said Muscat asked him whether he trusted Melvin Theuma. Fenech said he didn’t, given that he was recording him. “[Muscat] told me that Theuma was talking a lot of rubbish on the phone,” Fenech told investigators.

“[Theuma] was talking about this crime and betrayal and not betrayal, going up and down, and he started sending these subtle messages, etc., to blackmail, and the Prime Minister was worried—that’s how I found out that the Prime Minister had found out about Keith. Because the Prime Minister was primarily worried about Keith.”

“He had told me: “Does he have a lot on this guy, and is he mentioning him a lot in the recordings?” I had told him, and it’s true, because, in fact, as it really is, I protect [Keith] as much as possible.”

He was asked why he never mentioned this while he was requesting a pardon.

“Out of a sense of responsibility, because it’s not nice to reach the point where you mention the Prime Minister of the country. Rest assured, I am telling the truth, and the truth will come out. I am one hundred per cent convinced that the truth will come out. I am not saying that the Prime Minister was involved in the plot; let’s be clear. And I am not saying that the Prime Minister knew beforehand; let’s be crystal clear. I am saying that the Prime Minister knew afterwards and spoke to me twice. And he never spoke to me again after that day,” he said

The night of the arrest

Fenech also confirmed that he had spoken to Keith Schembri for roughly 30 minutes the evening before his arrest. Evidence presented at trial shows that Schembri and Fenech had a 24-minute phone call and exchanged several messages. He insisted that he had no plans to escape, but Schembri and Dr Adrian Vella told him to abscond to Tunisia.

“Keith Schembri wanted me to escape the country. I didn’t even know where I was going; I thought I was going to Gozo,” Fenech said. He said he had never intended to accept: “If I wanted to escape by boat, would I escape with €6,000?”

Fenech repeatedly tried to return to the night his yacht was intercepted off Malta – “shall we continue on Pozzallo?” – describing armed officers boarding “with lasers and guns, as if they were chasing Somalis” at four in the morning, and insisting he had alerted Valletta Port Control himself.

Fenech Claims He Had Evidence of Corruption In Closing Remarks

Fenech ended his interrogation with some closing remarks to

“I’m disappointed that the attitude toward me telling the truth was hostile – and that my version that it was Keith Schembri isn’t taken seriously – and, as I explained, I only realised that Keith Schembri was betraying me after the script.”

“Five days ago, we said that we were going to speak about the major corruption that exists in this country with evidence: with evidence of bank transactions, with evidence of events as they happened one after the other, the details; and I was ready to take responsibility for them. And since Monday, I’m still waiting for Assistant Commissioner Ian Abdilla,” he says towards the end of his interrogation.

“You have four different versions of events,” Zahra tells him. “I gave the version of Keith Schembri,” Fenech replies.

“You know what I would like to add? That I am disappointed, truly disappointed. I was always proud to be Maltese, and I am no longer proud to be Maltese, because this is an absolute, pathetic cover-up. But I am also convinced; I will have said it all; I have faith in the Court, and I am convinced that you will bring out the truth.”