The investigation, by Lilith Wittmann, Follow the Money, SVT, NDR, and NRK, places Platincasino and its owner, Thomas Kalman, at the centre of the billion-euro illegal online gambling probe.

Kalman’s lawyer, Nik Sarafi, told Wittmann the accusations were baseless. Kalman has not been charged with a crime.

The Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office has confirmed that more than 100 officers searched 11 properties on 8th September, mainly in Frankfurt and the surrounding Rhine-Main region. 

Five people are accused of offering online gambling commercially and as an organised group, without the required German licence, since at least July 2021. Prosecutors allege that about €5.86 billion was staked between July 2021 and the end of 2023. They also allege that the company did not pay gambling taxes in full or at all, and put the tax loss for 2024 alone at about €77.6 million. A Frankfurt district court issued the arrest warrant for the main suspect.

Prosecutors have not named the suspect. However, on 17th September, the Joint Gambling Authority of the German Federal States (GGL) welcomed the arrests linked to a €5.86 billion illegal gambling operation between July 2021 and the end of 2023. In that statement, the GGL explicitly warned consumers against participating in illegal offers such as Platincasino.

The investigation notes that the details of the Frankfurt arrest, including the figures and place of residence, match Kalman’s. 

Platincasino appeared online around 2014. From November 2017, the casino was associated with the Maltese company Red Rhino Limited, which held a Malta Gaming Authority licence. 

Archived versions of the site from 30th November 2017 identified the operator as Red Rhino Limited, a Maltese company holding MGA licence MGA/CL1/1364/2017. The latest known licence issued to Red Rhino was MGA/B2C/398/2017 and has been surrendered.

Maltese company records list Red Rhino’s parent company as Lazy Ape Holding Limited. The Malta Business Registry lists ARX Trustees Limited as the shareholder.

Documents seen by journalists from a leak of the MGA records that Wittmann conducted show Thomas Kalman, a Frankfurt-based entrepreneur, as Red Rhino’s sole ultimate beneficial owner.

According to the MBR UBO registry,  Thomas Kalman is the 100% owner of Red Rhino and the other companies. The companies have since changed their names. Red Rhino Limited changed its name to Rursus Inc Ltd in October 2025. Lazy Ape changed its name to Praestator Tech Ltd in November 2025. 

The reporters claim the companies fall under The Multiple Group brand, which has no matching company in the Maltese register and no EU trademark. The brand was used by employees, on social-media accounts, and at company events.

The investigation states that it handles Platincasino’s Zendesk support logins and advertises for German-speaking casino support staff in Malta. Those listings were live until September 2026. It also says that its current Facebook page is the former Red Rhino. The article says Kalman appears in its company-party videos from 2024 and spring 2026.

Germany’s new gambling law took effect in July 2021, allowing online casinos to obtain a German licence for the first time. The article notes that Kalman’s companies applied and were rejected. A bank statement filed in the Maltese company register shows that Red Rhino paid about €5.64 million to the Frankfurt tax office for German virtual slot machine tax for October 2022

In August 2023, a “Platincasino.com Database Migration Plan” was submitted to the MGA, setting 4 October 2023 as the date for transferring the casino’s player database.

The brand, domains and player data were later sold to Latiform BV, a company in Curaçao. Financial statements reportedly show that it paid €6 million for them.

The reporters say the gambling and betting licensing process has serious systemic issues.

Jetzt, an Austrian publication that partnered in the investigation, traced how former MGA head Mario Galea embedded himself in Curaçao’s regulatory framework. 

According to the article, Galea, on behalf of his company called Random Consulting, fielded gambling industry representatives’ questions at the Hilton Hotel in St Julian’s in November 2024. This was the SiGMA summit, one of Malta’s key industry events. 

According to Jetzt, Galea complained on the podium about ‘weak’ applications and ‘fake’ domains. In response to Jetzt reporters’ questions, Galea said his company was just a contractor supporting Curaçao’s authorities with ‘fact-finding’, and the ultimate decisions about licensing were fully in the hands of the responsible Curaçao authority.

In 2025, Galea was honoured in the SiGMA Euro-Med awards for his role in developing Malta’s early gambling regulations.

The case lands in the middle of a long-running dispute between Malta and Germany over MGA-licensed operators serving German players.

In 2023, Parliament passed Bill 55, adding Article 56A to the Gaming Act. The provision allows Maltese courts to refuse to recognise foreign judgments against Malta-licensed operators for activity that is lawful under Maltese law. German players have sued Malta-licensed operators to recover their losses, and critics have said the provision shields operators from such claims.

Taken together, the data shows that since 2006, Malta has lost at least 1.94 square kilometres of green land. The largest shift appears to be after 2012, which accounts for 90% of the land lost in the period under review.

Explore the map

According to the European Environment Agency, “the continuous loss of ecosystem functions renders [Europe] increasingly vulnerable when it comes to food self‑sufficiency and natural disasters”, and that going forward, governments should protect the most productive land from development.

A patchwork of strategies and plans governs development that converts natural or agricultural land into built-up areas. Sustainability goals exist in the Development Planning Act and local plans, but regulation, starting from the PN government’s rationalisation exercise in 2006, has allowed limited green spaces on the islands to be developed.

The government, in turn, is one of the largest developers of green land into grey space, contributing at least 112,467 m2 through prominent projects like the Hal Far expansion, Central Link, Addolorata cemetery, and airport runway expansion.

The Development Planning Act

The Development Planning Act includes a non-enforceable declaration that “It shall be the duty of the Government to enhance the quality of life for the benefit of the present and future generations” and “to consider public values, costs, benefits, risks and uncertainties involved when taking any decisions”.

The Act states that “In the pursuance of its functions under this Act, the [Planning] Authority shall, as far as possible, make reference to European Union best practices and standards”. The EU has set a goal of no net land take by 2050, which means no further increase in the share of land converted from natural to artificial surfaces. This means new land can still be built up, but it would need to be compensated by recultivating other built-up land.

The same law also stipulates that “no development shall be carried out except with development permission”. Development is defined as “building, engineering, quarrying, mining or other operations for the construction, demolition or alterations” or the making of any material change in use of land or building and sea, with limited exceptions such as maintenance. 

But the Act also opens a pathway to regularise development carried out without permission. A parliamentary question asked in 2023 revealed that over 2,000 illegally built structures were sanctioned between 2013 and then.

Moviment Graffiti and the local council challenged the Qala development mentioned earlier partly on the grounds of its negative impact on agricultural land. The court accepted the challengers’ arguments that agricultural use should be retained, and called the earlier tribunal’s reasoning that other uses, such as recreational pools, are permissible because they are not excluded by policy, “absurd”. For this reason alone, the court upheld the appeal, finding that the development was not permissible and the encroachment into agricultural land should not have been allowed.

A fresh application to sanction two pools in the same development is pending. 

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, the developers’ spokesperson said that “the land in question was already scheduled for development. The choice was therefore not between development and leaving the site in its natural state, but between one comprehensive, coordinated development and the possibility of approximately 40 individual plots being developed separately by different owners over time. We are very proud of the resulting development.”

The spokesperson added that “the relevant fines are being contested and we are currently pursuing the applicable sanctioning process” and that the developers “do not accept the characterisation that [the pools] were simply “illegally developed”, particularly while […] comparable pool developments on ODZ land have been permitted or sanctioned elsewhere in Malta and Gozo.”

Strategies, policies and plans

The entire territory of Malta is to be developed according to a Spatial Strategy. Local plans are adopted to manage development where that strategy is not enough.

In the early 90s through 2006, the government adopted policies and plans to regulate development in rural settlements outside the development zone (ODZ). The Rural Policy and Design Guidance, adopted in 2014, explicitly allowed expansion of buildings and introduction of enterprises in rural areas. The policy conflicted with adopted local plans, and in 2024, the government began revising the plans to avoid such conflicts.

The guiding principles in plans and strategies are written to safeguard localities from encroachment by construction. For example, the 2006 Gozo and Comino Local Plan stipulates that the overall strategy on these two islands encourages development that “improves the quality of life and the environment”, “is compatible with surrounding activities”, and “does not constitute over-development”.

“The extensive rural areas in Gozo and Comino require protection measures, and this is achieved by restraining further urban expansion, by protecting areas of conservation value and by designating strategic open space gaps between existing settlements,” the plan continues. 

As developments such as structures in Qala, which build over such open space gaps, suggest, expansions of built-up areas are approved anyway. 

Adopted in 2015, the Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development (SPED) allows “social and community facilities” for education, health, and care for elderly people, among others, to be located in rural areas where “no feasible alternatives exist” in urban areas.

The Planning Reforms 

In 2020, the government changed the fuel stations policy, capping their total number and effectively banning new fuel stations on agricultural land. Extensions of fuel stations outside development zones are no longer permitted.

Earlier in July, the government announced a planning reform by which, when a development permit is subject to appeal, works must be suspended for the appeal’s duration rather than being allowed to continue or even be completed while the appeal is pending. The reform also introduces time limits for considering appeals: a tribunal must convene within 30 days of works being suspended and take no more than six months to reach a decision. Critics have pointed out loopholes in the reform.

Unveiling the reform, planning minister Jonathan Attard said it was proof that “the political commitments we have made to the people are being turned into concrete action, by placing quality of life, public trust and the rule of law at the heart of the planning system.”

The pattern is not one of missing rules, but of rules with built-in exits. The Development Planning Act’s duty to protect quality of life is declaratory and cannot be enforced against the Authority. SPED permits community facilities on rural land where no urban alternative is judged feasible. The Rural Policy and Design Guidance allowed rural buildings to expand in conflict with local plans, until the plans were revised to match. And where building happens without permission, the Act provides a route to regularise it: more than 2,000 illegal structures were sanctioned between 2013 and 2023.Of the 1.94 square kilometres lost since 2006, 90% went after 2012. 

“The countryside and coast remain two of the most important natural resources to conserve and protect from inappropriate development,” the 2006 Gozo and Comino Local Plan reads. It did not protect the agricultural land.

Agriculture is an environmental double-edged sword. On one hand, it is Europe’s largest contributor to biodiversity loss. On the other, half of all species in the EU rely on agricultural habitats. 

According to the European Environment Agency, conversion of natural or semi-natural land (it includes cropland) into artificial surfaces “reduces ecosystem resilience by fragmenting landscapes, decreasing carbon storage and biodiversity capacity, increasing flood risk through higher surface run-off, and intensifying heatwave impacts in urban areas” while also decreasing quality of life.

A new investigation by Amphora Media, guided by Arena for Journalism in Europe and supported by The Malta Environment Foundation, reveals that Malta lost nearly 830,000 square metres to construction between 2018 and 2023. Since 2006, Malta has lost at least 1.94 square kilometres of green land.

Explore the map

A deep learning image recognition model compared satellite images over time and flagged land that appeared developed from above, with journalists manually removing incorrect data.

When reviewing satellite imagery, Amphora Media’s team found land in rural areas that was used for parking cars, boats, and other scrap material, unable to serve its ecological function.

Between 2012 and 2018, around 920,000 square metres were taken up, according to the European Environment Agency’s estimate. 

Figures show that in nearly 95% of the take-up, farmland rather than natural area was affected. Around 26% of the Maltese islands’ area is covered by artificial surfaces, and almost 15% is built up as of 2022. 

“We cannot continue to sacrifice agricultural land for short-term economic gains,” BirdLife Malta, an environmental NGO, said in response to a new agricultural policy document earlier this year.

Agricultural land in the city to be built over

Concerns about the loss of agricultural land boiled over again in a discussion about an application to develop a plot in Swatar, a highly urbanised area. 

“Once again, the Planning Authority has chosen to side with developers instead of protecting the environment and the quality of life of residents,” the Momentum party said in a press release, reacting to the approval of the planning application.

“Beyond its agricultural value, this space plays an important role in the daily lives of residents. It offers a sense of openness in a dense urban environment, supporting both physical and mental well-being. It also serves a critical environmental function by absorbing rainwater runoff, helping to reduce flooding risks in surrounding areas, particularly in Msida,” Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar, an environmental NGO, said

Agricultural sector in decline

Declining farmland goes hand in hand with Malta’s dwindling agricultural sector.

Between 2018 and 2023, Malta produced nearly 8% less vegetables and 12.3% less fruit (by weight). Between the two last agricultural censuses, 2010 and 2020, Malta lost nearly one in six agricultural holdings and over 6% of utilised agricultural land.

When development competes with agricultural land, its prices only rise. According to the latest agricultural census, Maltese farmers have 10,731 hectares of farmland, and about half of it is rented from the government. Land purchase prices in Malta are by far the highest in the EU.

“In Malta, one of the smallest countries in the world, land comes at a premium, and access to land is very limited. So if you have a new farmer, it’s almost impossible to enter the sector because they don’t have access to land and water,” Malcolm Borg, who leads Ghaqda Bdiewa Attivi, told Amphora Media in a previous investigation.

Despite farmers asking for help to afford land, Amphora Media’s earlier investigation has shown that funds earmarked by the EU to support farmers are routinely directed to road-building in Malta.

Cover image by: Joanna Demarco

Among the 20 largest pieces of land to be developed, the government is responsible for developing at least 112,466 m2 of land, roughly 13% of the total developed from 2018 onwards.

Explore the map

This analysis did not examine the circumstances of planning application approvals and focuses only on land-use change. There is no implication of wrongdoing.

These developments chip away at cropland and natural areas, making Malta one of the top countries in Europe for land loss to development.

Amphora Media has examined some of the largest land take-up projects. The research was based on analysis of satellite imagery [link to methodology]. 

No. 1 – Ħal-Far Industrial Estate – 32,948 m2

The plot is located within the Ħal Far Industrial Estate, managed by INDIS Malta, and has served as an industrial zone for decades. Back in 2018, this particular piece was an undeveloped field, and the converted area makes it the largest land take-up during the analysed period.

In 2022, Minister Silvio Schembri announced the relocation of Elepac Ltd’s factory to Hal Far. In 2024, the company applied to convert part of its factory to a waste management operation. According to reports, the land footprint was smaller than at the factory’s previous location.

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, INDIS Malta said that “INDIS Malta has never converted Outside Development Zones (ODZ) for industrial purposes. On the contrary, it has actively released thousands of square metres of land previously designated as industrial back to the Lands Authority so that they can be reverted to ODZ.”

No. 2 – Concert Grounds in Ta’ Qali –  24,131 m2

Concert Grounds in Ta’ Qali was the second-largest expansion of built-up area, although satellite images show paths and structures in the area as of 2018. A permit to build concert facilities was granted in 2021 and included landscaping.

The Parks in Malta website describes the area used for concerts in Ta’ Qali as “previously derelict” and since transformed into “soft and hard landscaped spaces”. For prominent concerts, the location is indicated as Ta’ Qali National Park.

Instead, as reported in the media, the government has controversially paved gravel over a large picnic area within the adjacent national park, raising concerns about its impact on the soil, the material’s suitability, and its cost.

No. 3 – Addolorata Cemetery – 23,848 m2

The expansion of the government-owned Addolorata cemetery was the third-largest land take-up identified in the data. In 2019, Chris Fearne, then Minister of Health, announced the cemetery extension, adding 2,880 new graves.

No. 4 – Mqabba Quarry – 20,692 m2

The Mqabba quarry is the fourth-largest development. The plot, identified on Google Maps as Sier and Sons, is licensed for handling inert and excavation waste, among other activities. 

Quarries are included in the data as they are disturbed land that no longer supports ecosystems, and quarrying, alongside mining, is mentioned as development in the Development Planning Act.

No 5: Central Link Project 19,136.1 m² (combined two sites 6,586.46 m² + 12,549.64 m²)

Road expansion in Attard for the Central Link project, across two areas, was one of the largest intakes. 

Environmental groups had challenged the project in court and lost. Meanwhile, Infrastructure Malta insisted that the project would “halve travel times” and bring “better quality of life for thousands of residents”.

No. 6 – Shoreline Mall – 19,067 m2

The Shoreline Mall has occupied what used to be coastal land. Complete with trampolines and wall climbing, and home to a Starbucks and numerous global clothing brands, the mall is ultimately owned by five businessmen.

No. 7 – Quarry in Dingli 18,116 m2

Satellite image shows how fields were replaced with a busy developed site with stripped topsoil. 

No. 8 –  Estate – 17,612 m2

The estate, home to General Maintenance Ltd, an engineering company, and MaritimeMt, a training academy for maritime professionals, was once a field.

No. 9 – Gozo Plot –  16,425 m2

[Updated] The Gozo plot, which used to be covered with fields, was indicated as hosting Malta Rescue Corps, an emergency response organisation. When contacted, the organisation sent the following correction: “We would like to clarify that the location indicated […] is incorrect. It had been marked wrongly, and this was updated [On Saturday 12 September].”

No. 10 – Quarry 15,147 m2

Land covered in fields has seen apparent quarry expansion. ERA lists six quarries in the area.

No. 11 – AX Centre in Mosta –  14,719 m2

A field surrounded by development has become the AX Business Centre in Mosta. AX Group calls this development “sustainable” and “eco-conscious”.

No 12: Antoine Camilleri block in Naxxar – 14,552 m2

A large area of rural land in Naxxar is being turned into a 6-floor development with underlying garages. Developed by Antoine Camilleri with Onyx.

The development entered the news earlier this year after the threat of a major collapse saw residents evacuated.

No. 13: Qala ODZ-Pools – 13,751 m2

The Hal Wardija resort apartments complex in Qala has replaced fields that broke up a heavily developed landscape in Gozo. The area is marketed to tourists as “quiet”.

This development consisted of separate applications to build garages and apartments. Pools were built illegally and then sanctioned, but a court later revoked that decision. Excel Investments Ltd filed the applications; it is co-owned by Daniel Refalo, Joseph Portelli, and Mark and Joseph Agius, and the fines for the illegal pools remain pending. A new application to sanction two pools is pending. 

ERA had objected to this development, given its ODZ encroachment, and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage noted with “grave concern” that the development was irreversibly changing the rural area.

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, the developers’ spokesperson said that “the land in question was already scheduled for development. The choice was therefore not between development and leaving the site in its natural state, but between one comprehensive, coordinated development and the possibility of approximately 40 individual plots being developed separately by different owners over time. We are very proud of the resulting

development.”

The spokesperson added that “the relevant fines are being contested and we are currently pursuing the applicable sanctioning process” and that the developers “do not accept the characterisation that [the pools] were simply “illegally developed”, particularly while […] comparable pool developments on ODZ land have been permitted or sanctioned elsewhere in Malta and Gozo.”

No 14:  Airport runway expansion – 12,403.86 m²

This rounds up the largest land use changes on government sites (Central Link, the cemetery, the industrial estate expansion, and the concert grounds).

No 15: Villas and Apartments in Attard: 12,069.56 m²

A large green area in Attard, located behind the American Embassy in Ta’ Qali.

The site was developed across multiple applications and includes villas, terraced houses, and apartment blocks.

No 16. Vista Xlokk, Marsaxlokk: 11,783.35 m²

A housing development in Marsaxlokk called Vista Xlokk ate up several fields. Malta Tourism Authority’s listings show that at least one of the development’s apartments is used as a short-let.

No. 17: The Crest, Sannat: 10,792.49 m²

This development included residential units and pools. Realtors market apartments in the development to those who enjoy “natural surroundings” and “country views”.

While Valletta stands as one of Malta’s most celebrated historical landmarks, an area of green space larger than the UNESCO capital has been lost to construction since 2018.

A new investigation by Amphora Media, in collaboration with Arena for Journalism in Europe and supported by The Malta Environment Foundation, reveals how nearly 830,000 square metres of nature and cropland have been built up in Malta between 2018 and 2023.

That’s about 116 football pitches – or two Manoel Islands – and roughly a quarter of Comino. It’s almost double the entire land area of Vatican City.

The investigation uses methodology established in ‘Green to Grey’, an award-winning investigation into documented green land (nature and cropland) loss in Europe. It was coordinated by Arena for Journalism in Europe and initiated by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) to quantify for the first time exactly how much nature is being lost to construction in Europe. 41 journalists from 11 countries worked together with scientists from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) to refine their novel methodology. Malta was excluded… until now.

Explore the map

Malta’s total land loss stands at 0.26%, placing it above the UK and among the top 5 countries by share of green area lost to development. The figure is a conservative estimate as the data uses an AI model to flag potential ‘Green to Grey’ areas.

The largest five areas identified in the research in Malta ranged from over 20,000 to over 34,000 square metres.

The land use changes may seem small on a map and are dispersed across Malta and Gozo. But as Peter Verburg, a professor of environmental spatial analysis at VU University Amsterdam, explained, the cumulative impact is driving global change.

According to figures provided by the European Environment Agency, Malta lost 920,000 square metres of land to development between 2012 and 2018; between 2006 and 2012, Malta lost 190,000 square metres.

Taken together, the data show that since 2006, when the PN government introduced its rationalisation exercise, Malta has lost at least 1.94 square kilometres of green land.

Artificial surfaces are the largest land use category in Malta, followed by cropland, which constitutes another quarter, and shrubland, about one fifth of the land area.

Statistically, around 26% of the Maltese islands’ area is covered by artificial surfaces, and almost 15% is built up as of 2022. 

Source: Eurostat

For comparison, areas enjoying some form of protection under the Natura 2000 framework cover nearly 14% of Malta’s land. Compared to other EU countries, Malta has a low rate of artificial area per resident, meaning that many people are concentrated in relatively small built-up areas.

In the Green to Grey team’s analysis, the Netherlands led in the share of land taken up by construction between 2018 and 2023, with 0.46%. Belgium, Poland, and the UK followed, with 0.25% or more. Countries of the Scandinavian peninsula lost 0.06% or less.

How did we do it?

With guidance from Arena for Journalism in Europe and Green to Grey’s coordinators, Amphora Media replicated the project’s methodology. This consisted of:

1. Using Dynamic World, a land use and land cover dataset produced by Google and the World Resources Institute, employing a deep learning model;
2. Tuning the algorithm to isolate every pixel that changed from not being built-up to being built-up between 2018 and 2023;
3. Manually verifying the model’s output;
4. Calculating the land take-up;
5. Finding case studies.

The team did not manually examine the entire territory of Malta to see whether the algorithm missed any developments, so the calculations and the map of identified land use change are conservative estimates, and some developments may be missing.

This method used satellite images only and did not address whether the land taken up is outside the development zone.

How to use the map

The map outlines the areas that were developed (turned from green to grey) and were detected as such by the algorithm. By scrolling through the map, you can zoom in, select a site, and see how it changed from a satellite view.

The Amphora Media team verified the shapes on the map using satellite imagery. Inaccuracies may occur where satellite images were unclear. The algorithm may have missed some developments because it relied only on satellite imagery. Therefore, use the map as a starting point for further inquiry rather than as conclusive evidence.

This investigation was supported by The Malta Environment Foundation

Public groundwater from boreholes and pumping galleries covers close to 42% of the total public water supply. Nearly two-thirds of monitoring stations across the islands showed that groundwater levels decreased between 2000 and 2021 due to abstraction.

Data obtained by Amphora Media from the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA) show that Polidano Brothers Ltd, Monte Kristo Vineyards Ltd and Polmesh Ltd have extracted nearly 227.5 million litres of water in 2020-2024 from their metered boreholes.

Monte Kristo Vineyards is the single largest extractor in the data set, extracting nearly 118.7 million litres of groundwater. It has four registered boreholes, but ERA had data from only one of them. This means that the company’s water footprint may be even larger. The boreholes are located in Mqabba, Qrendi and Siggiewi.

Polidano Group did not respond to Amphora Media’s questions about its water consumption and operations.

University of Malta’s water management expert Dr Julian Mamo says that some water sources are more important than others. “It’s all about drawdown,” he says, explaining how water in aquifers sits in lens-shaped structures, and intense extraction at the top of the aquifer would lower the water level for all nearby users, leading to seawater intrusion. “It very much depends on where you are. So the problem is the uncontrolled use from a single point,” he said.

The Planning Authority’s map shows that the Monte Kristo Vineyards site lies next to water infrastructure important for the public supply.

One of the boreholes that has no data is registered for private water supply. By law, private water suppliers provide water for commercial food and drink production, consumption on hospitality and restaurant premises, hospitals, and bottling. They must be registered.

Monte Kristo Vineyards has not filed accounts with the Malta Business Registry in almost 16 years. It risked being struck off in 2024, but avoided the procedure.

Malta Business Registry declined to comment on this specific case, but said that generally speaking, the striking off process can be halted “where an objection is received from a creditor, where the Registry is informed of pending judicial proceedings, or where the company demonstrates that it remains operational.”

Polmesh was set up to manufacture and supply building materials, and for steel manufacturing. It extracted nearly 62 million litres of water from its borehole in 2020-2024. Polidano Brothers extracted a further 47 million litres.

When asked whether commercial water supply, including by Montekristo Direct for government tenders, comes from an unmetered borehole, government authorities did not reply.

Supported by the government

Polidano companies have received government contracts for various construction, excavation and repair works. The Monte Kristo complex has hosted government-promoted events: a start-up festival, a statue collectors’ event, and an Arts Council workshop for children. Another company co-owned by Polidano, which specialises in alcohol and beverages, got a tender to supply soft drinks.

Charles Polidano had reportedly accrued some €40 million in unpaid taxes by 2021, before settling for less than €10 million with the tax commissioner.

Polidano Brothers ended the year 2023 with a loss of nearly €6 million, which it attributed to construction delays despite construction contracts worth €32 million and revenues from building materials, sale of property, and sale of fuel. Auditors noted that the company did not provide sufficient documentation for the audit.

In the financial year 2019, Polidano Brothers entered into an agreement with the Inland Revenue Department to repay overdue social security contributions with the government agreeing to waive some penalties for late payment. However, the company admitted to not respecting the terms of the agreement and instead discussing with the government to settle partly in-kind or introduce “set-offs against dues by Government to the Company”.

Polmesh, too, ended 2023 with a loss of close to €600,000.

Monte Kristo Vineyards Ltd received agricultural subsidies through the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2023 and 2024. The area has been subject to Planning Authority enforcement notices over illegal building on the agricultural site, which also features a concrete plant and a batching plant.

Charles Polidano’s 2009 and 2010 applications to sanction Montekristo’s family park, including an illegal zoo and an extension of its winery, in Siggiewi, were approved by the Planning Authority in July 2025 despite pending court cases concerning the site.

Official data shows that Monte Kristo Vineyards Ltd received over €36,000 in CAP subsidies in 2024, about a third of which were for environmental measures, and a further €37,000 in 2025.

In 2017, “Montekristo” (not specified, although the group contains several companies with this brand) received a €122,500 catering and ancillary services tender to service Malta’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2017.

This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

This is the second part of our investigation, Profit In Every Drop. Read part one here.

The Major Abstractors: Landscaping and Construction 

“A lot of water is used in construction in the production of concrete and bricks. The greater part of this water comes from registered/ unregistered groundwater pumped from boreholes – not from town water,” engineer Cremona told Amphora Media. “This is putting additional pressure on Malta’s already-stressed groundwater system – when we should be reducing extraction, not increasing it.”

From the available data, three companies controlled by brothers Carmel (known as Charles, or Ċaqnu) and Paul Polidano are the largest identified commercial consumers of free groundwater from metered boreholes on their properties. 

Data obtained by Amphora Media from ERA shows that Polidano Brothers Ltd, Monte Kristo Vineyards Ltd and Polmesh Ltd have extracted over 227.5 million litres of water in 2020-2024 from their metered boreholes.

GEB Landscaping, owned by V & C Contractors Limited, Ozo Group, Derek Garden Centre and Sicilville SRL in Italy, alone was the second-largest abstractor, with almost 106 million litres of groundwater across the dataset.

Our analysis shows that the landscaping company’s water footprint is highest in summer, 21% above the annual average in 2024. The address of the borehole is stated as simply “Attard”.

In 2025, GEB Landscaping lost, due to jurisdictional and procedural grounds, its legal challenge against a €11,461.31 fine imposed after the Water Services Corporation, which accused it of tampering with its water meter. The case was transferred to another court. GEB Landscaping did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions.

GEB Landscaping routinely receives tenders and direct orders for landscaping. In 2022, it received a €33.5 million contract to maintain landscaped areas on the islands. The Ozo Group, which leads the GEB consortium, called this contract “improving the environment for future generations”.

Mamo, the water management expert, says that landscaping is an important service in Malta. Rather than punishing groundwater use, the government should incentivise alternative water sources and encourage greater care in selecting plants suited to an increasingly arid climate.

In summer, water demand from landscaping soars. Photo credit: DOI

“I wouldn’t attack the landscaper. I would incentivise him to diversify his irrigation water sources. Tell him that the water cannot come from one borehole or two or three. We need to essentially redistribute where you get your water from,” he says, adding that for landscaping purposes, water does not need to be potable and can have a higher nitrogen content.

Attard Blue Mix Concrete Supplies and Attard Concrete Systems, are within the top 20 abstractors. The companies no longer exist and were absorbed into Cementstone Manufacturing Company Limited, owned by Attard Group.

Cementstone Manufacturing Company Limited, which produces and sells building materials to the construction industry, finished the financial year with over €24 million revenue, and a post-tax profit of over €550,000, a year after turning over a million in after-tax profit.

Attard Group benefited from over 59 million litres of free groundwater during the 2020-2024 period. No data was supplied for one of the boreholes in 2024.

Two companies belonging to the Elbros Group reported the use of over 11 million litres of water from their boreholes.

Meanwhile, Ballut Blocks Ltd, which produces concrete blocks and prefabricated concrete, logged over 7 million litres during 2024. According to its website, the company took part in building the airport runway, City Gate in Valletta, Tigne’ Point’s commercial block and Smart City, among other projects. 

None of the companies mentioned in this section replied to Amphora Media’s questions. 

Water & Wine: From Thirst to Profit

Water suppliers, predictably, extract groundwater for their business. 

A borehole owned by Sebastian Briffa and used by water supplier Victor Busuttil, known as tal-Maniklu, came third in terms of abstraction volumes over a five-year period, with over 100 million litres. 

Busuttil is a recipient of tenders and contracts, including Wasteserv, the Park Directorate, Ambjent Malta and SportMalta,  to supply water. He did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions.

A borehole registered to Madalien Ltd shows the 4th-largest abstraction of groundwater with over 96.2 million litres. The borehole was still registered in the company’s name as of 2024 although the company has been struck off after a merger with Master Wine Holdings Limited back in 2016.

The latter company is the registered owner of Camilleri Wines, Caraffa Wines, Zeppi’s Liqueur, Black Eagle, Just squashes, Budvar beer, Hawaiki juice, mySmoothie and Hildon bottled water. The company does not file income statements, using a legal exemption.

The borehole attributed to Madalien is located at San Gwann industrial estate. Louie Camilleri is the registered owner of the borehole. 

Branded water for PAVI supermarkets is produced on this industrial estate by Nibe Beverages Ltd, which also supplies Aquani water dispensers. PAVI has its own borehole but is not providing abstraction data to ERA. It did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions.

Nibe has received EU funding in Malta to export its product abroad. It received a €222,116 grant to produce more bottled water and another €232,276 for machinery. 

The spokesperson of CassarCamilleri Ltd, a joint venture involving Master Wine, said that the borehole use is shared between this group and Nibe Beverages, as both have initially invested in the borehole. “Our regulatory oversight has always been conducted through the Water Services Corporation (WSC) and the Health Department, who inspect the borehole and to whom we are obliged to provide readings and test results,” the spokesperson said when asked why ERA’s borehole ownership information was outdated.

With close to 78 million litres and over 48.5 million litres abstracted respectively, boreholes owned by Raymond Barbara and Alexander Vella round up the rest of the water suppliers in the top 10.

A separate A Vella Water Supplies Ltd borehole is registered on the same street as Vella’s. The company has not been filing accounts to MBR as required by law, leading MBR to issue a warning in 2020 and initiate strike-off procedures.

The company abstracted close to 3 million litres. When contacted for comment, the company’s representative suggested that Amphora Media investigates other suppliers.

In addition to Barbara, two other water suppliers, Vincent and Jonathan Desira, are registered users of Barbara’s borehole. 

Cremona’s analysis of ERA’s data suggests that 11 more boreholes may be attributable to water suppliers, but their names have been redacted.

Simonds Farsons Cisk Ltd, the maker of Cisk, Kinnie and San Michel water, is shown in ERA’s data as the 12th-largest user of groundwater in 2020-2024 with close to 30 million litres from one borehole and no data from another, which the company said was not in use. Simonds Farsons Cisk plc reports exporting products to more than 15 countries.

The company says it has since invested into water reuse and switched to using the public supply of water, for which it pays. In response to Amphora Media’s questions, its representative said the information was inaccurate and “No groundwater whatsoever has been extracted by the Farsons Group from any of its three boreholes since September 2020.”

Tourism

Tourism is one of the seven priority sectors promoted by the government and the most important industry according to a survey of Maltese residents. It is also a key player in groundwater abstraction. In hotels, groundwater can be used for pools, toilets and other applications. 

San Lawrenz Leisure Resort Ltd, which owns the Kempinski hotel in Gozo, is the fifth-largest user of free groundwater from its boreholes, with over 94.3 million litres in 2021-2024. Kempinski has six registered pools on its premises. It is also located next to important groundwater infrastructure.

The company is registered as a small private enterprise and is exempt from submitting income statements to the Malta Business Registry. It is estimated that the company’s investment property is worth over €31.8 million. 

The hotel in Malta is owned by Baldacchino Holdings Limited. The same group also owns Olive Gardens Investments Limited, a wedding reception and catering company, which owns a borehole that used nearly 3 million litres in 2020-2024.

That brings the total that Baldacchino Holdings companies extracted close to 100 million litres for the years for which they provided data.

According to official accounts, the entire group’s profit was close to €1.2 million in 2021. The group’s revenues from hospitality and leisure in 2021 were close to €5.6 million.

In Kempinski brand’s global annual report for 2024, the network wrote about the importance of water conservation and noted annual water reduction targets in its hotels, including recapture and recycling of water.

Gozo Village Holidays, a short and long-term rental company, is another of the top 20 users of groundwater.

In 2020-2021, none of the company’s three boreholes supplied abstraction data to ERA, but data for two boreholes appear from 2022, with over 10.1 million litres abstracted from 2022 to 2024. 

The company runs short lets and long rentals, features a swimming pool in its marketing to tourists and is run at the Fanal complex.

Several hospitality businesses own boreholes but do not report the data to ERA. This includes:

• Corinthia Palace Hotel in Attard: Corinthia Palace Hotel Company Limited, renamed CPHCL Company Limited and owned by, among others, the Libyan Foreign Investment Company.
• FTI Hotel Management (Malta) Limited, since renamed Meeting Point Hotel Management (Malta) Limited, and owned by Joseph Beppe Bugeja, Vassallo Group and its owners. It is a tour and hotel operator running the Labranda brand. Its borehole is located at the Riviera Spa Resort in Mellieha, which hosts Carisma Spa and Wellness. It has eight registered pools, although some of them are filled with seawater.
• Bella Vista Hotel, which has registered two swimming pools and two spa pools. It is owned by BV Formosa Company Ltd.
• C H Formosa Company Limited, which runs three hotels, a holiday villa and a holiday complex. ERA did not receive data from its borehole. One of their hotels has four registered swimming pools, and the other two have one each.
• Sunflower Hotels Co Ltd, which advertises a children’s pool and a heated indoor pool on its premises. It is currently in dissolution.
• Villa Rosa Hotel in St Julian’s offers self-catering accommodation and is now part of a multi-story development. It has one registered pool. A development application to replace existing buildings with a new complex was approved in 2025.
   

None of the companies mentioned above in this section replied to Amphora Media’s questions.

Two other companies were linked to boreholes with missing data:

• Mavina Holiday Complex, which Business Today reported has been sold to Joseph Portelli’s company. However, at the time of writing Hal Mann Vella Group PLC was still a shareholder. The owners’ representative said no boreholes currently belong to the complex.
  
• The Embassy Valletta hotel is linked to a borehole for which no data is reported. The company’s representative said the hotel only uses the public water supply and does not abstract from any borehole.

The Energy and Water Agency once initiated a project to help hospitality establishments audit their water use. When asked whether such ‘soft’ action addresses the over-extraction by the tourism sector, EWA did not reply.

Sport & event establishments

Sport clubs are a key feature in the data, although they are non-profits. Marsa Sports Club used over 18 million litres of water in 2020-2024, Qormi Clay Shooting Club used over 6 million, the Malta Football Association used nearly 5.5 million, and Malta Shooting Sport Federation used over 5 million litres from their registered boreholes. 

Not all of them supply the data. The Royal Malta Golf Club and Malta Racing Club, both boasting extensive landscaped area, have abstraction records missing. When asked whether their boreholes are unmetered and how much water the clubs abstract, the club’s representatives did not reply.

Properties hosting events also feature on the list provided by ERA, including:

• Sciclunas Estates, the owners of Palazzo Parisio, an events venue, which was the 21st-largest user of groundwater from boreholes. 
• Mount St. Joseph Retreat, a Jesuit-owned conference venue, which used more than 10 million litres of water over five years;
• Palazzo Promontorio, a wedding venue that can fit 700 people in its outside area, belonging to the AX Group, which showed more modest consumption, with 2 million litres. “At AX Group, sustainability is woven into our ethos, driving us to minimise our environmental impact across all facets of our operations,” the owning group claims. 

Palazzo Stagno in Qormi, another wedding and event venue which specifically offers pool parties, is not reporting data to ERA. Representatives of these venues did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions.

Public sector finances water supply

The public sector (national and EU authorities) is left to foot the bill for declining water quality and quantity. When overused groundwater becomes saltier, the cost of treating it increases.

“Malta continues to invest in leakage reduction, network modernisation, improved quality of desalinated water, expansion of reclaimed water networks and water demand management through a national investment programme exceeding 300 million euros,” Christopher Farrugia, Malta’s representative to the EU, stated in the EU’s Environment Council. When asked how these objectives are compatible with free and unmetered extraction for profit, Malta’s Representation to the EU and the Environment Ministry did not reply.

Malta has implemented an EU-funded project, reportedly worth €100 million, to improve the desalinated water and groundwater blend. Another €62 million project focused on upgrading reverse osmosis plants and rehabilitating boreholes. Around €3.5 million in EU funds was invested in water network improvements.

Malta has reported that EU-funded water infrastructure projects faced significant delays because contractors failed to complete work on time.

The European Commission refused Amphora Media’s request to disclose audit reports of funded projects, citing the reason that disclosure “could undermine the rights of the persons or entities concerned.”

Asked to comment on policy coherence, where the government invests in protecting water resources but also contracts users of free and loosely monitored groundwater, OPM did not reply.

Dr Mamo says that each groundwater source has its own vulnerabilities and therefore needs to be managed differently. “In Malta’s mean sea-level aquifer, and the equivalent aquifer in Gozo, our largest and most productive aquifers, it’s all about drawdown,” he says. He explains that freshwater forms a lens floating above seawater, maintained by a delicate balance between abstraction and recharge. Excessive pumping can lower groundwater levels, increasing the risk of seawater being drawn up into the freshwater lens above it. “It very much depends on where you are. The problem is uncontrolled abstraction from a single point,” he says.

“Wherever I go, no one tells me ‘I don’t care about groundwater. I want to pollute it or I want to damage it’. Absolutely not. Actually, people will say, ‘Am I pumping too much?’ The general sentiment is that groundwater sustains a lot of people.”

The European Commission has noted that “water abstractions are reported to be responsible for the failure to achieve good quantitative or ecological status” in many countries, and “Although they failed to submit their reports, this is known to be also a significant issue in Cyprus, Greece and Malta.” Yet Malta’s commercial sector, responsible for 16% of private abstractions as of 2023 and growing, continues to pump for free. 

This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

A cross-border investigation covering Malta, Cyprus and Portugal shows that three of the EU’s five most water-stressed countries systematically tolerate over-exploitation by for-profit companies. 

“Turn off the water while you brush your teeth and save up to 15 litres a minute. That’s up to 760 litres a week for a family of four,” a government campaign says. Meanwhile, the largest groundwater user drew at least 250,867 litres per week for a sprawling estate.

In 2023, Malta used 35 million cubic metres, or 35 billion litres, of groundwater. 13 million cubic metres were used for the public water supply; over 17 million for irrigation in agriculture and forestry; and roughly 1.5 million for manufacturing and services.

“Over-abstraction has resulted in the intrusion of saline waters in the main mean sea level aquifer systems, contributing to the gradual salinisation of these important groundwater reserves,” a government green paper, published in 2023, said.

To address unsustainable use, the green paper proposed pricing and quotas for water users. Since then, nothing has happened, except for unspecified “internal discussions”, according to the Environment and Resources Authority (ERA).

The registered commercial share is another question. Official records provided by ERA to Amphora Media show that more than 63% of all registered commercial groundwater boreholes are providing “no data”.

“What is probably happening is that most operators across the board would have one registered borehole and one or more, which is not. This so that, if the government decides to charge a tariff on the water pumped from the registered borehole, they will shift pumping from one borehole to another and continue as usual,” water treatment engineer and hydrologist Marco Cremona told Amphora Media after reviewing the data.

He is convinced that the dataset is incomplete: “I know of a number of commercial operators that pump a lot of water but are not on the list. For example, there is no information on the groundwater being pumped by commercial laundries – who also are big users of water,” he said.

Data indicates a rise in groundwater abstraction (more colloquially, extraction) by commercial operators over the period.

In 2020, total consumption stood at 459.9 million litres. By 2023, it had climbed to 656.8 million litres. In 2024 (the most recently available data), the figure dipped to 605.3 million litres, below the 2023 peak but still well above 2020 levels.

THE TOP GROUNDWATER ABSTRACTORS

Over-Abstraction Can Make Groundwater ‘Unusable For Decades’

A report by the European Environment Agency has found that over-abstraction causes salty water to mix with freshwater sources, particularly in Mediterranean countries like Malta, which could render groundwater “unusable for decades.”

It can also damage agricultural yields. Groundwater supplies over 80% of the Maltese agricultural sector’s needs, costing these users around €0.25 per cubic metre to deliver it where it is needed.

Marsa Sports Club, itself a major water user with over 18 million litres abstracted in 2020-2024, told Amphora Media that increasing salinity has been demanding more investments: “as the quality of the groundwater has deteriorated over the years through increasing salinity, the Club has been obliged to invest significant funds in adapting its facilities,” the club said. “These investments have been funded from the Club’s limited resources.”

The EU has set objectives to restore and protect the water cycle from source to sea by recognising water scarcity as a priority in the European Green Deal and various strategies, stating that “groundwater needs to be protected from pollution and over-exploitation”. 

The bloc’s Water Resilience Strategy calls for action to address “structural mismanagement of water due to both legal and illegal over-abstraction”.

Countries must “increase their efforts to register and control all abstractions”, and a pan-EU review of the strategy is promised in 2027. A 2025 Commission recommendation calls on countries to “apply appropriate water pricing to ensure the efficient use of water” and “adopt sufficiently dissuasive sanctions for illegal, unregistered or non-permitted water abstractions and discharges”.

None of this has stopped the government of Malta from allowing commercial operators to benefit from free groundwater abstraction, as long as they own boreholes.

Spokespersons of the government authorities contacted for comment did not reply to Amphora Media’s questions. The European Commission’s spokesperson told the investigation team that in principle, “Member States are required to control abstractions of fresh surface water and groundwater” including “a requirement for prior authorisation and the maintenance of a register or registers of water abstractions”, but “Member States may exempt from these controls any abstractions that ‘have no significant impact on water status.”

“There is some room for manoeuvre, and member states have been overusing this exemption now for years,” says Claire Baffert, water expert at the WWF European Policy Office.

How the free water economy works

The arrangement is simple: whoever owns a borehole pumps it for free.

Based on ERA data obtained by Amphora Media, Cremona compared extraction data across seasons and noted that summer abstraction is 29% above the annual average.

“A substantial part of this water is pumped by bowser operators who sell their water to hotels, for landscaping, for the filling up of swimming pools etc. In comparison, the pumping in winter (the wet season in Malta) goes down to 22% below the annual average,” he said.

Non-potable water, called second-class water, can be used for toilet flushing, laundry, cleaning and irrigation. This water would cost €0.093 per cubic metre for agricultural or industrial purposes, or €0.932 per cubic metre for building or other applications, if it was purchased from the Water Services Corporation.

“Some commercial operators have reverse osmosis plants operating on groundwater, as an alternative to buying town water. In this situation, we are looking at three costs:

• the cost of pumping it from the ground to the surface – which is a relatively minor cost; 
• the cost of the treatment process itself (both in capital expenditure and operating costs); 
• and finally, there’s the discharge cost of the reverse osmosis reject. 

Notwithstanding these costs, it is still cheaper than buying public water,” Cremona said.

Dr Julian Mamo, a lecturer at the University of Malta working on water resources management in Malta, says that the cost of pumping, or lifting, groundwater cannot be considered negligible for sectors with lower profit margins such as agriculture. 

“In a country like Malta, where in the past our ancestors had to live with water scarcity, people then generally used water efficiently. Today this may not be the case for everyone, for sure. But generally, full-time farmers continue to use water efficiently because of the effort required to obtain this water,” he said.

“It’s the cumulative impact of all those abstractions that matters, and if none of those is monitored, then you end up in a situation where there is just too much water abstracted without everyone taking note of that,” WWF’s Baffert says.  Yet Malta’s commercial sector, responsible for 16% of private abstractions as of 2023 and growing, continues to pump for free. 

Read the second part of our investigation, looking at the companies and industries drawing the most free groundwater in Malta, here.

This investigation was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe.

The declarations, covering 29 Labour and 23 Nationalist MPs, show a stark spending divide between the two parties. PL candidates declared €571,877 among them, an average of €20,424 each, while PN candidates declared €162,857, an average of €7,081.

In total, Labour candidates outspent their Nationalist counterparts by three and a half to one.

The gap is starkest at the top of the table. The fourteen highest spenders are all Labour candidates, eleven of whom declared over €26,000. The highest-spending Nationalist MP, Beppe Galea, ranks fifteenth at €17,368.

At the other end of the scale, Prime Minister Robert Abela and Opposition leader Alex Borg declared no campaign expenditure at all. Party spending falls outside the individual candidate cap, and Amphora Media has already reported how most donations to political parties remain undisclosed to voters.

Minister Joe Etienne Abela, the highest spender, did not declare the source of his funds. He was one of 35 MPs (including PM Robert Abela and Alex Borg)  who listed no donors in their campaigns – a combined €454,216.53 in spending with no declared donors.

The ten largest sums with no declared donors belonged to Cabinet members: Ministers Jo Etienne Abela, Chris Bonett, Keith Azzopardi Tanti, Jonathan Attard, Miriam Dalli, Silvio Schembri, Byron Camilleri, Clint Camilleri, Malcolm Agius Galea and PS Alison Zerafa Civelli. The spend ranged from €16,578 to €38,940.

Under the Electoral Commission’s 2026 guidance, a candidate cannot spend more than €20,000 for each district contested. Since the cap applies per district, a candidate contesting two districts has an effective ceiling of €40,000.

Five candidates declared totals within €1,800 of that two-district ceiling. Abela was followed by Ian Borg at €39,680, Rosianne Cutajar at €39,448.11, Christian Paul Bonett at €38,629.88 and Keith Azzopardi Tanti at €38,200.

What the declarations reveal

Beyond the headline figures, the declarations offer a rare glimpse into the donors who fund campaigns.

Justice Minister Owen Bonnici filed the most extensively itemised donor list, naming nine sources. These included €10,000 each from “Family Abela” and “Family Felice” and €2,000 from “Family Mangion”, while one donor’s name was illegible on the form itself.

Rosianne Cutajar received €18,000 in donations for ‘food and beverages’ and ‘sound and audiovisual’ from Daniel Farrugia, her partner. Her declared total of €39,448.11 places her just over €500 below the two-district ceiling.

Ian Borg declared funds raised through “friends of candidate” coffee mornings and small gatherings at venues including Villa Arrigo and Xara Lodges. He also listed donations as “each under €500” – meaning they remain anonymous.

Where the money went

Hire costs were the single largest expense category across all candidates, at €204,979. But close behind was “other miscellaneous expenses” at €191,621, meaning roughly a quarter of all declared campaign spending sits under a catch-all label with no further breakdown. For example, “other miscellaneous” accounted for €20,637.63 of Minister Abela’s total.

Printing (€102,248) and advertising (€100,952) accounted for a further €200,000 between them, followed by postage (€50,464), personal expenses (€36,749), stationery (€34,446) and travel (€9,992). Over the years, political parties spent hundreds of thousands to advertise on Meta. Many candidates defied Meta’s recent political advertising ban, running short-lived ads.

The dataset covers only the 52 elected candidates, not the full field of candidates who contested the election, and fewer than the full complement of MPs. Data for other candidates was not provided. All figures are as declared by the candidates.

You can find more political finance data on Open Malta.

“I am not the mastermind,” the former chief of staff to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said, telling the court he was “600 million per cent” certain he had no connection to Caruana Galizia’s killing or to the men accused of carrying it out.

Asked why he thought Fenech had named him, Schembri said Fenech knew him inside out and that it had been the easiest way out. He said the allegation had cost him his business and his banking relationships.

“I will never forget the friendship I had with him,” he said.

The denial came at the close of a long cross-examination by Giannella de Marco, who appears for Yorgen Fenech. Fenech, who is accused of commissioning the October 2017 car bomb that killed the journalist, has alleged that the murder originated with Schembri. Schembri is not charged in connection with the murder and has consistently denied any role in it. He is charged with leaking information on the case.

The missing phone

De Marco returned repeatedly to Schembri’s mobile phone, which has never been recovered.

Schembri said that on the morning of his arrest he received a call at 5:03am from Dr Adrian Vella, his and Fenech’s personal doctor, who told him people were knocking at his door. Asked why he assumed these were police officers, Schembri said it was obvious to him, because he had been told that Fenech had turned his statement against him.

De Marco put it to him that this account could not stand, because Vella had been arrested at 12:30am. Schembri did not identify who had informed him. Pressed on whether the police commissioner or the officers leading the investigation had tipped him off, he said he did not remember and insisted he had no close relationship with then commissioner Lawrence Cutajar.

Schembri said he had resigned shortly before officers came for him, and that Muscat had told him he was doing the right thing.

He told the court that workmen were at his house that morning, both moving furniture indoors and working near the pool, and suggested one of them might have taken the phone. De Marco noted that this account had not appeared in his statements or earlier testimony, that neither investigators nor scene-of-crime officers had recorded workers inside the house, and that photographs showed no works under way.

“I was going through a trauma at the time, from chief of staff to being arrested,” Schembri said. “To this day, I still don’t know where it is.”

The note passed to his doctor

De Marco pressed Schembri on the note that Adrian Vella is alleged to have carried from Schembri’s home to Fenech.

Schembri denied handing over any paper. He said he had told Vella to “go upstairs, there are some papers, take what you want,” and that Vella had taken it himself. He said no fingerprints of his were found on the document, and that he had never seen it before. He added that he could not go further because he had been instructed not to refer to the first pardon request.

De Marco put to him that Vella, who was accustomed to reading Schembri’s blood test results, would have been able to tell a set of test results from a handwritten note. Schembri maintained he had not touched the paper.

Theuma, Camilleri and Cremona

Schembri repeated that he did not know Melvin Theuma and had met him only when Theuma came to Castille, where he said he passed him on to the head of HR, Sandro Craus, after Theuma asked him for a job. He denied giving Theuma a tour of the building and denied ever asking him to kill Caruana Galizia.

On Kenneth Camilleri, the former security officer who has testified about being sent to keep Theuma calm, Schembri said Camilleri bore a grudge against him because he had once threatened to sack him for carrying weapons into Castille. Asked why he had never raised this before, he replied: “Why did I need to say it?”

De Marco put Camilleri’s and Johann Cremona’s accounts to him in turn. 

Schembri said both were lying. Asked in sequence about scene-of-crime officers, Camilleri, Cremona, Theuma, Adrian Vella and the journalist Saviour Balzan, he maintained that each had either lied or was mistaken.

The defence also produced screenshots of Schembri’s call log showing a contact saved as “Rukkell,” which the court has heard belongs to Camilleri, with an answered incoming call at 12:12. The court noted that the date of the screenshot cannot be established from the metadata, which records only when the image was accessed.

David Gatt and the August 2017 calls

Schembri said former police inspector and lawyer David Gatt had lobbied him to be made ambassador to Israel, and described an incident in which he returned to his office to find Gatt undressed, saying he had done so to show he had nothing to hide. Schembri said he told him to get dressed and leave, and that investigators had advised him to steer clear of Gatt.

De Marco put call and location data to him showing that Gatt and Schembri were in the same antenna area on the morning of 16 August 2017, that they spoke at 11:40am, and that Schembri called Gatt again at 5pm. 

Schembri said the calls concerned the Israeli ambassador and that he could not explain calls Gatt made afterwards. Dr Martin Bajada, assisting the court, took the jury through the call logs.

“Lorry told me Keith there’s nothing”

The defence exhibited a chat between Schembri and Muscat, marked KS2, in which Muscat asks which recording is in question and Schembri replies that it is not the one mentioned in court, that the story is invented, and that “Lorry” had told him there was nothing but that he would keep checking.

Schembri confirmed that “Lorry” was Lawrence Cutajar and that “there’s nothing” referred to material concerning himself. De Marco pointed out that he had already resigned by then, and asked why, if he was certain he had never spoken to Theuma, he was asking the police commissioner whether recordings mentioning him existed. Schembri said he could not explain the message because too much time had passed.

The paper on the Castille desk

De Marco produced a handwritten sheet recovered during the search of Schembri’s Castille office, visible in the search video. It carried a reference to Caruana Galizia’s blog dated 31 October 2016, an arrow, and the initials “PD,” alongside the date of the murder and the date of the Degiorgio brothers’ arrest.

Schembri first accepted the handwriting as his, then, on closer inspection, said only the initials “DCG” were his. He said the notes related to reports in the Italian media suggesting the murder was connected to diesel smuggling, and that he had passed that material to Saviour Balzan, with whom he said he shared stories. 

Balzan has told the court that Schembri confided the story to him; Schembri said Balzan was wrong, because the material had already appeared internationally.

Daphne’s writing about him

Asked whether Caruana Galizia had crossed a line when she wrote about his cancer diagnosis, Schembri said she had not done so with him, but had with his family and children. He said he had filed libel suits against her, which he believed concerned 17 Black, and had withdrawn them after her death.

He told the court he had developed a political thick skin and that his family had not, and said he asks his mother to pray for Caruana Galizia before he goes to sleep.

De Marco also returned to his earlier evidence that people from abroad had asked him why he had not got rid of the journalist. Schembri said these were investors from the Middle East, accustomed to a different environment, and that he had replied: “What, do we kill people like that?”

The trial continues.