Yorgen Fenech “indicated” to Keith Schembri that he was involved in the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the former OPM chief of staff told jurors.

“I froze… I don’t know where we were. We went out for a drink somewhere. He said things that led me to believe that he might have been the one who did it, and I just froze,” Schembri said.

“We burst out crying and then hugged each other and went home.”

“I didn’t speak to anyone…maybe because he was my friend. I made one single mistake: when I started hearing things, I didn’t go straight to the Prime Minister. That was a huge mistake and a heavy cross to bear.”

“I froze because: 1)I had an obligation to keep the government going; 2) He was my friend; His kids were good friends with my kids; Our wives were good friends.”

He was unclear on the timeline of the episode, saying this happened after Fenech was identified as a potential suspect by investigators. This puts it roughly in the months leading up to Theuma and Fenech’s arrest in November 2019.

Schembri, the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, revealed the detail during his second day of testimony in the trial against Fenech over the murder. Since his arrest, Fenech and his legal team have claimed that it was Schembri who actually ordered and commissioned the assassination. Schembri outright denied Fenech’s claims.

George Degiorgio, one of the men convicted of carrying out the killing, has also implicated him. Schembri called that “an outright lie” and said he had never even known the men involved, apart from Fenech.

Asked whether he had been at a meeting between Muscat, Fenech and himself at which Theuma was discussed, he answered: “I certainly wasn’t at that meeting.”

Schembri faced intense questioning on his communication with Fenech, particularly the day before the businessman was arrested on board his cabin cruiser on 20th November 2019.

Jurors were presented with screenshots of Signal conversations & calls between Schembri and Fenech.

The day before Fenech’s arrest, Fenech sent Schembri an article revealing that the middleman in the murder had been granted a pardon.

“At about 9:30 pm, I received a call from Joseph Muscat – he told me that the Malta Security Services and Armed Forces informed him that Yorgen was planning to escape. He told me to call him and do all I could to stop him. I called. Yorgen told me that he was planning to go to Sicily for a few days. I told him that for the sake of myself and the Prime Minister, he wouldn’t escape, as it would put the spotlight on me.

The prosecution pressed him on his own vocabulary, noting that he had first said Fenech was going to “escape” and then that he was going to “remove himself from the country”. Schembri said he might have changed the word.

“Yorgen was talking to me strongly, not quite aggressive, but he was asking me: He got the pardon? He got the pardon? He got the pardon? This was already open source information.”

The call, Schembri said, lasted about 24 minutes. “We spoke about a lot of things. He told me he was going to Sicily for two days. I always told him – please for me, do not escape the island,” Schembri said.

“Help me. Don’t leave me alone. Give me support,” Fenech wrote to Schembri in a chat. Two calls later, Schembri replies: “I am giving it to you – you need to be aggressive and fight”. “It’s either one or the other?” Schembri added. Fenech told he has seen the media at the marina and still wants to leave.

“I was trying to calm him down. I was telling him I would help him, even if I couldn’t. He either was going to escape or turn himself in. He needed to fight to clear his name. I knew he wouldn’t take the option to fight,” Schembri explained to the court. Fenech told he has seen the media at the marina but still wants to leave.

“I then went to sleep. At 5 am I was at the gym – and my phone exploded with news about the arrest.”

Schembri outright denied that he provided anyone, particularly Fenech, with information about Theuma’s pardon – and insisted that he was in no way involved in the discussions over whether or not to grant it.

“It was open source by that point” – a phrase Schembri used regularly to explain how Fenech was aware of certain details of the investigation.

Secret Recordings Name Schembri’s Involvement In Passing Information

A secret recording Theuma took of a conversation with Fenech was played in court. The tape, ‘Voice 007’, shows Fenech and Theuma discussing Schembri by name.

The propositions put to him, drawn line by line from the tape, focused on the description of a man positioned between the murder investigation and the men who would later be charged over it.  

Twice on the tape Fenech tells Theuma that Schembri had gone into the fire for him. Asked what that meant, Schembri returned to a formulation he used throughout the day: Fenech was his friend, and wherever he could help him, he had helped him.

The most direct allegation came not from the tape but from Fenech’s own statement to police, which counsel put to him flatly: that Fenech had obtained details of the investigation from Schembri and passed them on to Theuma. Schembri said this was not true.

Jurors were also shown a handwritten note found on Fenech when he was arrested. In it, Theuma sets out that he was the middleman in the killing, names Schembri and Fenech as the two men who paid for it, and says both of them were working to have him killed as well. 

He wrote that he had gathered the evidence so that it would be found even if they killed him.

Asked why Theuma had named him alongside Fenech, Schembri said: “Ask him.” Asked why the note was in Fenech’s possession, he said the same.

“I was the biggest prize in the equation,” he said.

He added that he had read in one outlet that Theuma had said he used the photograph in the ice-cream box to blackmail him. Schembri’s account of that photograph is that it was taken at Castille and that Sandro Craus told him to move closer so that the Prime Minister would also be in frame.

The arrest and ‘lost’ mobile phone

The arrest of Keith Schembri – and the privileges he was afforded as the second-most powerful man in Malta behind the Prime Minister – have been a key focus of testimonies, grabbing headlines over the police’s handling of a potential suspect.

“We were informed that around [the lead investigator] told us to collect all devices indicated to us by Keith Schembri,” PC Michelle Camilleri told the court. This was confirmed by another police officer, PC Mario Azzopardi.

This was on top of other irregularities regarding the arrest, including officers not being told the purpose of the search in advance and the presence of Schembri’s lawyers, Mark Vassallo and Edward Gatt.

This has been a sticking point for jurors. Schembri “lost” his phone the day of the arrest. It was last active at 5 am, around an hour before his arrest. Under questioning, Schembri confirmed that he had workmen at his house from 5:30 am, and that one of them could have taken it.

He only realised it was lost at the police depot. Officers returned to the house and searched again without finding it

“I don’t know where I left it. I know it’s a hard thing for the jurors to believe,” he said.

Hundreds of photographs were taken by police officers that day. One photo showed two mobile phones that officers did not seize.

“Let me explain it clearly to you. I was arrested in the morning, searched and taken to the depot. I then went back with scene of crime officers. By then, my mother, father, Neville Gafa and the nanny were home. Those mobiles belong to them. 100%,” Schembri said.

A search at Schembri’s office in Castille uncovered a detail not previously known. Schembri kept folders containing Daphne’s blog posts, written about him and the government. Those folders contained all articles about the government, including those written by other journalists and media houses.

“I never used laptops or computers – just mobiles,” he said.

The Doctor and The Note

Schembri and Fenech’s mutual doctor, Adrian Vella, has been central the trial and the accusations of Schembri’s links to the murder. According to Vella’s previous statements to police, he went to Schembri’s house, while Fenech was out on police bail, and Schembri passed on a note. That note was given to Fenech, who says it contained a plot to frame Chris Cardona for the murder.

Schembri outright denied involvement – and said that he passed on health-related reports. He said the first time he saw the note was under interrogation. Experts have previously confirmed that Schembri’s fingerprints were not among the 70 found on the note. 

He further revealed that the weekend prior to Fenech’s arrest – Vella informed him that he was visiting Fenech in Gozo “because he needed him”. This was the day after Theuma was arrested. Schembri provided few details beyond that.

The WhatsApp Group: Fenech, Schembri, the Deputy Police Commissioner and MGA CEO

Schembri confirmed that he had been in a WhatsApp group with Fenech and with Silvio Valletta, the deputy police commissioner who oversaw the murder investigation until he was removed from it over his links to Fenech. 

Also in the group, Schembri said, were Joe Cuschieri, then chief executive of the Malta Gaming Authority, and Kenneth Azzopardi, Schembri’s own assistant at Castille. 

He said the group was for jokes, “trying to break up the day”, and confirmed he had seen Valletta at Fenech’s ranch.

He told the court that during the investigation, he and Valletta had agreed between them that the case against Fenech did not fit. “He agreed with me that it made no sense for Yorgen to do something like that.”

Schembri then volunteered an exchange with Valletta from before the assassination.

“I told him, God forbid they kill her – you take all the files and shred them,” he said. “It was a joke.”