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The Murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia

In October 2017, the most famous journalist on Malta—Daphne Caruana Galizia, a one-woman publication whose investigative blog into the elites and offshores of her island, Running Commentary, averaged 300,000 page views a day—was murdered by a car bomb while driving home from work. The question remains: who killed her and why?

Lurking behind Galizia's murder is the island she branded a mafia state. Her investigative reporting, which ranged from the kleptocrats of Malta’s parliament to the Russian and Azeri oligarchs who stash their fortunes on the island to the Libyan syndicates who use Malta as a base for smuggling oil to the coast of southern Europe, sheds some light on what the tiny nation of Malta says about the state of Europe today. Tax evasion, money laundering, the commodification of European citizenship—the EU’s smallest country is where the decadence of an entire continent runs rogue.

Murder in Malta

Daphne Caruana Galizia was Malta’s most dogged and controversial journalist. Last year she was murdered. Alexander Clapp travelled to the island to find out why.