Speaker 1: Welcome to our classic episode, Conspiracy Realist. Hey, guys, do
Speaker 1: you sometimes think that rich people might be rigging the game? No,
Speaker 1: just a little. I just choose to believe the narrative.
Speaker 2: Yes, is the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Kay, are right, I'm being coy.
Speaker 2: They've been doing it since the dawn of time. And
Speaker 2: this episode, y'all, is a very specific one about the
Speaker 2: death of a journalist who was covering this very thing.
Speaker 1: We call it the Panama Papers. Let's get to it.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is our compatriot,
Speaker 2: are Better Third is on a bit of an adventure,
Speaker 2: but he will return shortly.
Speaker 1: Better Third, Crucial, Third, Crucial Third. In the meantime, they
Speaker 1: call me Ben. We were joined as always with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Mission controlled decands. Most importantly, you are you,
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. A little bit of true crime today.
Speaker 2: Matt, Yeah, very true and very crime.
Speaker 1: Yes, and very much ongoing. So longtime listeners will remember
Speaker 1: that back in the day we had Alex Winter on
Speaker 1: this show. That's right, Do you remember that?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. It was one of my favorite interviews we've
Speaker 2: ever done, one of the Bill and Ted of the
Speaker 2: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and was the other one.
Speaker 1: The Bogus Journey fogust Journey, Bogus Journey featuring Death.
Speaker 2: But he's not just some silly young kid running through
Speaker 2: time and trying to finish papers for a history class. No,
Speaker 2: that gentleman Alex Winter. He is a documentarian and he
Speaker 2: has put out some great work. One was on the
Speaker 2: Deep Web or the dark Net, and that's what we
Speaker 2: interviewed him for.
Speaker 1: And this this guy incredibly nice, very generous with his time,
Speaker 1: loves hot pockets. I think that's still my favorite part
Speaker 1: of the interview. Did that make it onto the air.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I think we may.
Speaker 1: Have cut that part. There was a part in the
Speaker 1: interview just backstage off Mic. It was probably off Mike
Speaker 1: because we're professionals now or what. Yeah, he said, hang on, guys,
Speaker 1: he's making a very good point about something. He said,
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, hold on, he said what And
Speaker 1: then we hear Dan in the background He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: making hot pockets, Like.
Speaker 2: Don't eat him, it's too hot yet. Yeah, just wait,
Speaker 2: wait for a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the weight it was the worst part. We really bonded. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He did Deep Web, which was a fascinating exploration of
Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of people get wrong
Speaker 1: when they read about it in the news. But that
Speaker 1: is far from his only film. He also released a
Speaker 1: documentary recently on the Panama Papers.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Panama Papers. This is a topic that we've
Speaker 2: done an episode on before. In the past. It was
Speaker 2: called money Mystery and Millionaires.
Speaker 1: It was a very illiterative phase for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. But the Panama Papers were is
Speaker 2: a very serious thing. It was a leak, the largest
Speaker 2: leak in human.
Speaker 1: History, something around eleven point five million files from dating
Speaker 1: back to the seventies to twenty fifteen or so. That's
Speaker 1: two point six terabytes of data detailing these secret financial
Speaker 1: relationships and attorning client privileged information, the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: you would never ordinarily see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was dealing. You're talking about shell companies and
Speaker 2: offshore accounts and secret just money moving, almost laundering almost
Speaker 2: in some cases.
Speaker 1: It was definitely laundry. Yes, so this This all comes
Speaker 1: from a law firm in Panama called Massik Fonseka.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's that's the one. And so you might wonder, well,
Speaker 2: why on earth would someone at music Fonseica send out
Speaker 2: that much information. Well, there was a person who was
Speaker 2: identified as John Doe. They were given to a German
Speaker 2: newspaper by this anonymous person, and then there was a landslide,
Speaker 2: essentially a very secretive landslide of information, and people investigating
Speaker 2: kind of in the shadows because this seemed like very
Speaker 2: dangerous stuff to have.
Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed it did, because this involves over two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand different offshore entities. And this John Doe spoiler alert folks,
Speaker 1: that's probably not this person's real name.
Speaker 2: Gonna, you know, gonna go ahead and say, I probably.
Speaker 1: Agree, Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't ordinarily profile. But this, this character,
Speaker 1: this John Doe person said that they themselves feared for
Speaker 1: their lives because the nature of the evidence, just the facts,
Speaker 1: the information that's involved in this leak. In some cases
Speaker 1: it confirmed long suspected crimes. We know this person is
Speaker 1: maybe doing something very white collar like tax avoidance, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we can't quite prove it, We can't quite follow
Speaker 1: the money due to different different countries ways of handling
Speaker 1: financial transactions. That's a big thing, yes.
Speaker 2: And these types of financial transactions a lot of times
Speaker 2: in our minds, I think collectively, we think of this
Speaker 2: as something that maybe a drug lord would participate in,
Speaker 2: maybe somebody who is doing some kind of illegal activity
Speaker 2: that needs to, like we said, launder money for some reason.
Speaker 2: But what we found out in these Panela papers is
Speaker 2: that these kinds of activities are just kind of par
Speaker 2: for the course for anyone who has enough money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, above a certain threshold, it is normalized to engage
Speaker 1: in these sorts of practices. And in our previous episode,
Speaker 1: which you absolutely should listen to if you haven't checked
Speaker 1: it out yet, in our previous episode, we explore how
Speaker 1: the German paper came to find the safest way to
Speaker 1: disseminate and analyze this info. We also found just how
Speaker 1: many people had been to your point, Matt, how many
Speaker 1: people had been named. These financial movements through shell companies
Speaker 1: involve athletes, involve bankers, involve criminals you know as in
Speaker 1: like drug cartel overlords and stuff, but it also involves politicians.
Speaker 1: British Prime Minister David Camberon was implicated in this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmunder Goonluk Sun had to resign.
Speaker 1: I believe he ultimately stepped down. Also, a lot of
Speaker 1: these transactions that we see moving money from one shell
Speaker 1: company to another to get the best tax position. That
Speaker 1: stuff's legal. It's a legal thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then what are you gonna do about it? Right?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just we're the big players of the
Speaker 2: world and this is what we're doing. If it's if
Speaker 2: it's proven to be tax avoidance, then it's illegal. If
Speaker 2: it's just moving money around and make sure it's safe
Speaker 2: in Switzerland somewhere, or Panama, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Sure, it's just gambling. And you know, Vegas baby, that's
Speaker 1: what That's probably what people say.
Speaker 2: That's what they That's what they all say in Panama.
Speaker 2: Vegas baby, that's what they all say.
Speaker 1: That's what they all say. In the country of Panama.
Speaker 1: They'll say, Vegas baby. Why is this a big deal? Though?
Speaker 1: If these things are legal, if it's just a depiction
Speaker 1: of a confidential yet still legal financial process, what gives
Speaker 1: where's the beef?
Speaker 2: Well, because not all of it is legal.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, In multiple cases, the transactions indicate some pretty heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: Perhaps most importantly, the Panama papers show the clear process
Speaker 1: through which these sorts of financial crimes occur. It's possible
Speaker 1: using this information to follow money from point A to B,
Speaker 1: to C to Z and so on. That is in
Speaker 1: itself extraordinary. So from a criminal perspective, this exposes a
Speaker 1: large industry built entirely to hide money, whether it's a
Speaker 1: legal form of tax avoidance, whether it's out and out fraud,
Speaker 1: whether it's bribery disguised as a loan, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you're hitting the nail on the
Speaker 2: head here, Ben. It's not even so much about the
Speaker 2: players that are essentially the clients moving money. It's about
Speaker 2: the system like the at Masak Fonseka that was built
Speaker 2: to do this thing, the giant, I don't know what
Speaker 2: we call it, the machine that ends up processing everything.
Speaker 2: That's where that's that can be dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what I'm thinking too. So for instance,
Speaker 1: let's let's go with the automobile analogy. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So the people riding in the car, or are the
Speaker 1: people named in these transactions, got a gasoline or petrol
Speaker 1: or whatever is the money.
Speaker 2: Just got pumping in.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what the Panama Papers showed us was the engine.
Speaker 1: It took us under the hood. And so we see
Speaker 1: how the money moves, and we know it takes these
Speaker 1: people to certain places. Right.
Speaker 3: I don't want to overthink this comparison.
Speaker 2: Maybe the passengers are the money, Okay, the engine is
Speaker 2: the machine that's moving it to somewhere because the money
Speaker 2: is going places, right yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, then and you're spending money to do it.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, that's right. So the money is also the gas.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get a whiteboard. Paul, do we have a whiteboard? Wait?
Speaker 2: Wait, Paul's been writing all this down. He's just been
Speaker 2: etching it into the wall. Oh wow, that's very helpful.
Speaker 2: We are going to have to replace that to Paul.
Speaker 1: You know, it needs to be transparent. This terrible comparison
Speaker 1: we've created should exist for all time. It wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1: I thought it was great, But the release of these
Speaker 1: papers was not great for the folks involved. It was
Speaker 1: not all sunshine and rainbows on their end. No.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you can kind of feel that Ben and
Speaker 2: I are having fun in the studio and this is
Speaker 2: one of those topics that is going to get very heavy.
Speaker 2: We just I think that's something that Ben you and
Speaker 2: I do when we're talking about something that's pretty heavy.
Speaker 2: Just give a little lightness to it, but prepare yourself.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. This is a bit of the
Speaker 1: I called it. I used to call it the MPR
Speaker 1: story formula, but it's not not really MPR. It's more
Speaker 1: programs that are on MPR, like the Moth or something.
Speaker 1: So what you do is you start out with a
Speaker 1: lighthearted statement or something very bold in one sentence, got it,
Speaker 1: and then you save the heavy stuff for the turn
Speaker 1: at the end. And this is where we're approaching the
Speaker 1: turn to our second half, folks, because when that German
Speaker 1: paper student Deutsche Zeitung received the original leak and they
Speaker 1: realized the size of the stuff they were dealing with,
Speaker 1: they started, as you said, Matt, secretly asking for help
Speaker 1: throughout the journalistic community. Yes, because we need multiple sources
Speaker 1: to confirm this stuff is true. First off, do we
Speaker 1: know this is even real? If so, how that's a long, arduous,
Speaker 1: tedious process. And John Doe complicated it because John Doe,
Speaker 1: fearing for their life, had certain conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could only com or. He could only communicate
Speaker 2: with them and them back through encrypted channels, which is
Speaker 2: I would say, kind of standard for this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: is very Edward Snowden in a way, almost like digitally
Speaker 2: putting your cell phone in the freezer. They could also
Speaker 2: never meet face to face, so neither side would know
Speaker 2: exactly I guess who they were talking to. Well, in
Speaker 2: this case, I'm sure John Doe knew some of the
Speaker 2: names of the journalists, and you could definitely see through
Speaker 2: his actions just how scared this John Doe was about
Speaker 2: his actions and about the power that these papers held.
Speaker 1: And as of today, we still know very very little
Speaker 1: about this individual or this group of people pretending to
Speaker 1: be an individual. We simply know that they treated this
Speaker 1: situation with enormous gravity, and we still publicly don't know
Speaker 1: their motivation for disseminating this knowledge. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: John Doe, whoever he or she or they may be,
Speaker 1: was absolutely correct. This was indeed a life or death situation,
Speaker 1: and the story continued after we did our original episode.
Speaker 1: So what do we mean when we say life or death?
Speaker 1: We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor. Here's
Speaker 1: where it gets crazy. We'd like to introduce you to
Speaker 1: Daphne Karuna Galizia.
Speaker 2: She was born August twenty sixth, nineteen sixty four. She
Speaker 2: was a Maltese journalist. She was an author and an activist,
Speaker 2: and she was also a just a prolific blogger. She's
Speaker 2: basically the you could call her a classic trope of
Speaker 2: the no excuses I'm gonna tell truth to power investigative journalists,
Speaker 2: essentially just functioning on her own and with organizations, but
Speaker 2: definitely you could read you could read her passion for
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff in her blog, and if you're
Speaker 2: interested in it right now, you can, like, as we're
Speaker 2: talking about this up yeah, yeah, you can go over there.
Speaker 2: Let me just pull it up really fast. The website
Speaker 2: is Daphne d A p h n E Karuna c
Speaker 2: A r u A n A Galiza g A l
Speaker 2: I z i A dot com and you can go
Speaker 2: there right now and you can just see all of
Speaker 2: these posts that she made, and like I said, you
Speaker 2: can you can see her passion.
Speaker 1: And she spent decades building her reputation in Malta and abroad,
Speaker 1: primarily for investigations into what she saw as the corruption
Speaker 1: riddled government society and industry of Malta. She examined things
Speaker 1: like the link between Malta's online gambling and organized crime,
Speaker 1: or something called the citizenship by investment scheme, also known
Speaker 1: as golden visas. And this one was an interesting one
Speaker 1: because this happens in a ton of countries. This happens
Speaker 1: in the US, this happens in the UK if you
Speaker 1: pay a certain amount of money, or you by paying
Speaker 1: we mean in some cases, if you invest in a
Speaker 1: company or something at a certain amount of money, maybe
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars, probably probably more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it sounds like it's a good starting point.
Speaker 1: And then you get residency and eventually you get citizenship.
Speaker 1: This is a legal thing. It's of course, it's incredibly unfair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most most citizenship requests that are granted every year are
Speaker 1: not this. This is this is a wealthy person's loophole.
Speaker 2: Yes, right.
Speaker 1: So the problem with happening in Malta is that because
Speaker 1: they're a member of the EU. Uh, there was concern
Speaker 1: that they would they were essentially selling passports to people
Speaker 1: who would be maybe unfriendly, uh, unfriendly to the West,
Speaker 1: got it. But because they had an EU passport, they
Speaker 1: could do things like travel to the US without a visa,
Speaker 1: and they could also launder some money as well, because
Speaker 1: with citizenship come certain rights.
Speaker 2: Yes, she was on the trail of all kinds of
Speaker 2: money laundering throughout her career, and also, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of some other standard things like nepotism within government, within corporations,
Speaker 2: government corruption, which is an old standby.
Speaker 1: Yes, especially in Malta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was really speaking truth to power.
Speaker 1: And she paid for it. Malta is not a large nation,
Speaker 1: that's right. A lot of people know each other. She
Speaker 1: was the target of intimidation, lawsuits, threats of lawsuits for
Speaker 1: libel and so on for most of her career. She
Speaker 1: was arrest by the multi police force twice. Someone set
Speaker 1: the front door of their house on fire in ninety six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's really bad. The worst one is that
Speaker 2: the family dog, her family's dog had its throat cut
Speaker 2: and it was laid across her doorstep.
Speaker 1: And then another dog got shot, I believe. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there was a murder attempt on her life. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. The house was set on fire while
Speaker 1: the family was asleep inside, and according to her son Matthew,
Speaker 1: these threats occurred on an almost daily basis, so this
Speaker 1: is a very high stakes life. Every day, thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of people are following her blog Running Commentary, and
Speaker 1: she's also a regular contributor in Calmness for the Sunday
Speaker 1: Times of Malta, the Malta Independent.
Speaker 2: And just to point that out what Benja said there,
Speaker 2: the Running Commentary is the name of the blog that
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah. The website is ww dot Daphne Karunagalizia
Speaker 1: dot com, but the name of it is Running Commentary.
Speaker 1: So far we've painted the picture of a fascinating journalist,
Speaker 1: right and the largest leak in human history that we
Speaker 1: know of. How are they related other than just accurate journalism.
Speaker 1: They're related because it turns out that Galisio was the
Speaker 1: first person to learn about Panamanian companies involved in various
Speaker 1: crimes by Multese nationals and specifically politicians, specifically politicians, active politicians,
Speaker 1: politicians and power. And she had put these pieces together
Speaker 1: before the Panama papers leaked. They were transmitted to the
Speaker 1: German paper in twenty fifteen. They went public in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: but she had figured out some aspects of this and
Speaker 1: the stuff she had figured out was confirmed by these
Speaker 1: Panama papers leaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so back in February twenty sixteen, she was talking
Speaker 2: about this guy, Conrad Mizzi or Measi. He was a
Speaker 2: Maltese government minister and he had connections, or at least
Speaker 2: she's hinting that he had connections to New Zealand and Panama.
Speaker 2: Two of the places that we found in the Panama
Speaker 2: papers were laundering money or at least involved in some
Speaker 2: of those things. And then apparently he Mizzi revealed the
Speaker 2: trust just two days after she started hinting at this stuff,
Speaker 2: and he was claiming that it was meant to manage
Speaker 2: his family's assets, which is one of his involvement with
Speaker 2: these things. And that is one very common thing that
Speaker 2: we see. The very very wealthy a lot of times
Speaker 2: have assets that are tied up in familial relations, inheritance,
Speaker 2: things like that, massive amounts of money and they have
Speaker 2: to be protected.
Speaker 1: And it's okay, right, trying to be nice, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get it. That same month, though, in February, this journalist
Speaker 1: also revealed that the Prime Minister's chief of staff a
Speaker 1: guy named Keith Shembrie, and the Prime Minister is Joseph
Speaker 1: Musket At this time owned they owned a similar trust
Speaker 1: in New Zealand, which in turn held a Panamanian shell company.
Speaker 1: The leak confirmed that Missy Conrad Mizzy owned a company
Speaker 1: called Herneville Incorporated, and that Missi and this guy Shembrie
Speaker 1: had also opened another company, Tillgate Incorporated. These companies were
Speaker 1: owned by the Orion Trust New Zealand Limited, which are
Speaker 1: the same trustees of Mizzi and Shembrie's New Zealand Trust
Speaker 1: and a couple of other things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again that sounds really confusing. Sure, Yeah, basically
Speaker 2: these guys opened front companies or shell corporations, not necessarily
Speaker 2: front companies, those are different things. But there's shell corporations
Speaker 2: that exist in these other companies other countries. And that's
Speaker 2: what we know, right for sure.
Speaker 1: That's what we know, that is proven, that is true.
Speaker 1: And again Galicia was the person who exposed this information
Speaker 1: in Malta, and she continued in twenty seventeen. She alleged
Speaker 1: that another Panamanian company called a Grant was owned by
Speaker 1: Michelle Mascott, the wife of the Prime Minister. These allegations
Speaker 1: are what ostensibly compelled Mascott to call general elections in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, and he still won. He still won the election.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The last blog post that Galisia leaves, the last sentence
Speaker 1: of the last blog posts that she would ever write, says,
Speaker 1: there are crooks everywhere you look. Now the situation is desperate.
Speaker 2: Then on October sixteenth, twenty seventeen, it was the last
Speaker 2: time Matthew Karuna Galiza saw his mother alive. This is
Speaker 2: this is her son. She was out running errands. She
Speaker 2: was just heading to the bank in her car. It
Speaker 2: was a gray Pougeot one eight. It's a type of vehicle.
Speaker 2: And apparently a government minister had gotten the courts, you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps out of some kind of backlash, I don't know,
Speaker 2: but he had gotten the courts to freeze her bank accounts,
Speaker 2: and she was intending to fight for access to her
Speaker 2: funds because it's her money. Then her son, seemingly out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, heard an explosion. He was only about eighty
Speaker 2: meters away from where this explosion occurred, and according to Matthew,
Speaker 2: he immediately knew, at least he felt at least that
Speaker 2: this was a car bomb and it was meant for
Speaker 2: his mother.
Speaker 1: Yes, which is is something that sounds like maybe a
Speaker 1: strange conclusion to jump to right away.
Speaker 2: I imagine the I imagine there had to have been
Speaker 2: some outward I don't want to say paranoia. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm sure it would manifest from the outside as paranoia,
Speaker 2: but from the inside, it was just knowing the truth
Speaker 2: of her situation.
Speaker 1: Maybe this was also not the first time even that
Speaker 1: year that a car bomb had been used as a
Speaker 1: tool of assassination. This was the sixth time. There would
Speaker 1: have been five more car bombing attacks, some with survivors
Speaker 1: from one in January, September, October. Yeah, it was a messy,
Speaker 1: messy business. What we're saying is he would have also
Speaker 1: already have heard about something like a car bomb being
Speaker 1: used this way.
Speaker 2: So he's standing there, this explosion occurs, He's only eighty
Speaker 2: meters away. He starts running down the road. He's barefoot.
Speaker 2: He's frantically calling his mother's cell phone. He heard a
Speaker 2: car horn blazing, he smelled burning fuel, and then he
Speaker 2: saw it. It was his mom's car. It was on fire,
Speaker 2: and it was just sitting there on fire in a
Speaker 2: field of wildflowers, And he apparently saw pieces of flesh
Speaker 2: laying on the ground, and he certainly feared the worst,
Speaker 2: and he was right. And then Matthew her Son recounted
Speaker 2: this horrific scene in a social media post. In there,
Speaker 2: you know, within that post he's he's speaking to the
Speaker 2: authorities in a negative manner, saying that they allowed for
Speaker 2: this culture of impunity to fester and inside Malta, saying
Speaker 2: that this guy Joseph Muscat, these other people that we've mentioned,
Speaker 2: Keith Shembrie, Chris Cardona, Conrad Mizzi, even the Attorney General
Speaker 2: Peter Gretch, basically this huge list of police commissioners. He
Speaker 2: was saying all of these people took no action, and
Speaker 2: he was saying that they were complicit in her death.
Speaker 1: It's true that being a journalist is globally speaking, a
Speaker 1: dangerous business. Dozens of journalists are murdered every year around
Speaker 1: the world, and usually we're seeing that happen in places
Speaker 1: that are war zones or spheres of conflict, or countries
Speaker 1: with a weak rule of law or weak protections for
Speaker 1: freedom of speech. This was a massive shock to a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the West because the European Union
Speaker 1: considers itself a haven for journalism in many ways, so
Speaker 1: this felt blatant, public and grizzly it was not just
Speaker 1: meant to remove a person, much like polonium poisoning. It
Speaker 1: was meant to send a message. And I'm making the
Speaker 1: polonium reference not to say that this was a Russian,
Speaker 1: a Russian manufactured hit, but just to say, you know,
Speaker 1: there was visibility was meant to be part of it.
Speaker 1: It was condemned in editorials from some of the most
Speaker 1: widely followed, well respected news sources around the world. You know,
Speaker 1: all the hits, The New York Times, CNN, Financial Times,
Speaker 1: The Guardian, the Economists, I believe. After her death, an
Speaker 1: international consortium of journalists launched the Daphning Project, which was
Speaker 1: coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Forbidden Stories as a Paris based
Speaker 1: organization dedicated to continuing the work of killed or imprisoned journalists.
Speaker 1: Even Julian Assange weighed in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he announced that he was going to pay twenty
Speaker 2: thousand euro a reward essentially for any information leading to
Speaker 2: the conviction of Karuna Galiza's killers. That's a huge deal
Speaker 2: that Julia Saunders would step up and do that. Galiza's
Speaker 2: family then filed a legal claim against the police force
Speaker 2: in Malta and they allege that the investigation or whatever
Speaker 2: investigation is occurring has not been independent or impartial because
Speaker 2: of connections between a senior police investigator and a government minister.
Speaker 2: Because again all those people she implicated and had things
Speaker 2: to say about, they have the potential to have influence
Speaker 2: within the law enforcement sphere, and both were subjects of
Speaker 2: Karuna Gliza's block exactly.
Speaker 1: And where does this leave us now? So the facts
Speaker 1: so far are that the Panama papers leak, they confirm
Speaker 1: what a long time investigative journalist slash activist has said
Speaker 1: in the country of Malta, and after numerous attempts on
Speaker 1: her life, she dies. One of the murder attempts works.
Speaker 1: So what happens next, we'll tell you after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor. So fast forward. Ten people were arrested
Speaker 1: in raids at dawn on December fourth, twenty seventeen, in
Speaker 1: relation to this murder investigation, which was at the time
Speaker 1: quite controversial because the journalists around the world and journalists
Speaker 1: support associations the survivors of Galiza's death, they all are
Speaker 1: convinced that there is a cover up a foot and
Speaker 1: you can't really blame them. Eventually, three people were charged
Speaker 1: for the murder for committing the acts of rigging a
Speaker 1: car bomb and detonating it, and his brothers named George
Speaker 1: and Alfred di Giorgio and Vincent muscatt Despite all these
Speaker 1: protests in Malta and abroad, it appeared that the government
Speaker 1: of the country was indeed factually was actually dragging its
Speaker 1: feet in the investigation. The three suspects claimed their arrest
Speaker 1: and searches violated their fundamental rights, which in practice worked
Speaker 1: as a way of delay in the trial. And now
Speaker 1: it leads us to the Panama Papers in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: because years after the leak, you have to wonder how
Speaker 1: much this has actually changed the situation on the ground.
Speaker 1: It's something you and I talked about in the first
Speaker 1: episode of the Papers. I mean, these things, these things
Speaker 1: blow up, right, and this information is revealed, but those
Speaker 1: shell companies, except for a few egregious ones, are still around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It definitely reminds me of the financial crash of
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, where we
Speaker 2: as a human people saw the cracks in the system
Speaker 2: and the blatant holes in the system, and the way
Speaker 2: the machine itself was rigged, and yet nothing really changed.
Speaker 2: I think there was one arrest I could tell I
Speaker 2: know of and maybe they're a handful of arrests in
Speaker 2: that situation. And it's the same with the Panama Papers.
Speaker 2: There was a man named Richard Gaffney was He lived
Speaker 2: in Massachusetts. He was an accountant. He was apprehended in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, in December. That was the first the first
Speaker 2: arrest occurred for the Panama Papers in the US. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in December of twenty eighteen. I mean there have been
Speaker 2: there again, there's been a handful of people who have
Speaker 2: gotten in various levels of trouble throughout the world because
Speaker 2: of the Panama Papers. Some politicians have stepped down at
Speaker 2: least in part due to the Panama Papers coming out,
Speaker 2: or at least had to apologize. I remember when David
Speaker 2: Cameron had this whole story. It was the same thing
Speaker 2: with you know, this is my family's money and it's
Speaker 2: just in a trust and we're just moving it around.
Speaker 1: But Vegas, baby, Yeah, there we go. That's what that
Speaker 1: was what Cameron said. Yes, it's mostly his black track money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the United States is different from in Malta,
Speaker 2: it's different from New Zealand, it's different from in Panama
Speaker 2: where it's actually occurring, and in Malta. There is a
Speaker 2: clear issue.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'll put it simply. The people who are in
Speaker 1: charge of investigating this murder are the people that Galizio
Speaker 1: was investigating when she was alive, or they're closely affiliated
Speaker 1: with the people that she accused of cover ups crime
Speaker 1: and even things ranging into support of violent crime.
Speaker 2: It's like a waterfall of paychecks. Basically, who signs your
Speaker 2: paycheck well and goes all the way up. Oh yep,
Speaker 2: it's that.
Speaker 1: Guy, turtles all the way down. Yeah, and their terror
Speaker 1: all the way down perhaps, And you can't blame people
Speaker 1: for saying there's something screwy with this investigation. One. I
Speaker 1: think the Prime Minister continued to pursue a libel case
Speaker 1: against against Galicia after she was dead and said he
Speaker 1: would drop it if everyone agreed that he.
Speaker 2: That he's cool and he didn't do anything right.
Speaker 1: And I'm laughing with a bitter note here, because you see,
Speaker 1: at this point it's widely agreed that these three men
Speaker 1: who are currently in custody for this crime, it's widely
Speaker 1: agreed that they were not the brains behind the operation.
Speaker 1: They are all are all slightly older, low level criminals,
Speaker 1: most mostly known for their activity in the diesel smuggling business,
Speaker 1: which is a big business in Malta. Yeah, so who
Speaker 1: is at the top, you know, someone who would be
Speaker 1: we were looking then in that case, we're looking for
Speaker 1: someone who fits a couple of descriptions or couple of profiles.
Speaker 1: We're looking for someone who has enough money or enough
Speaker 1: you know, financial clout such that they would be a
Speaker 1: subject of something in the Panama papers. Yes, they have
Speaker 1: to be shell company rich, right.
Speaker 2: Probably not an elected official. It might be a one
Speaker 2: step removed from elected official.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, it might be somebody who bought a passport
Speaker 1: who knows and travels internationally, but they're somehow involved in
Speaker 1: Maltese business, because otherwise Dealisia wouldn't have run up against them,
Speaker 1: you know what. Right, So it's someone who is probably
Speaker 1: on an international sphere, maybe in politics, but definitely closely
Speaker 1: related to someone in politics. Let's say they at the
Speaker 1: very least have an interest in Maltese governance, right or
Speaker 1: some regulations, and they're not the type of person to
Speaker 1: go out and rig a carbon themselves. They probably are
Speaker 1: quite possibly not to be unfair to this horrific excuse
Speaker 1: for a person, but they probably don't know how to
Speaker 1: break a car bomb.
Speaker 2: I would agree with that.
Speaker 1: So the investigation and the cover up continues. We mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier these three criminals had said their rights were violated.
Speaker 1: As of February twenty nineteen, when we're recording this, it
Speaker 1: seems that the trial may finally begin. That's right, begin, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It's so it's good right. That was twenty seventeen when
Speaker 2: they argued that their rights are being violated. Now two
Speaker 2: years later later, the investigation is going on. The police
Speaker 2: are actually trying to find more suspects connected with the murder,
Speaker 2: so trying to go up that chain to see who
Speaker 2: actually ordered it. And this includes people who are suspected
Speaker 2: to be linked with the commissioning that's, like we said,
Speaker 2: but not the putting together the bomb, but the commissioning
Speaker 2: of the bomb. And foreign investigators have questioned the reluctance
Speaker 2: of the Maltese police to kind of keep this trial
Speaker 2: going and make it happen, and they've also questioned the
Speaker 2: reluctance of them to proceed against more suspects because that's
Speaker 2: where it could get really tricky, right for the police themselves.
Speaker 1: That's where you get a little True Detective Season one
Speaker 1: right following up the chain, up the food chain of crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's believed that there may be between three and five
Speaker 1: other people who have who are known to the police
Speaker 1: or known to law enforcement, but have not been publicly revealed.
Speaker 1: The argument being that they're not slowing up the investigation
Speaker 1: on purpose, they just need to gather more evidence at
Speaker 1: this point. Again's controversial thing. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: believe the story. A lot of European news outlets still
Speaker 1: follow the investigation and the trial. There's an Italian daily
Speaker 1: paper called La Republica and it's been following a it's
Speaker 1: been barking up a specific theory tree that may be
Speaker 1: of interest to people who are familiar with this case
Speaker 1: or we're just learning about it. The suspects in the murder,
Speaker 1: the diesel fuel smugglers. It seems a very strange and
Speaker 1: specific type of crime. They apparently, according to this paper,
Speaker 1: have a connection with someone called Christian Cardona, Malta's current
Speaker 1: Minister of Economics economy minister. In the weeks leading up
Speaker 1: to Galizia's assassination, this guy, Christian Cardona, was spotted in
Speaker 1: a remote bar on Malta twice with one of the
Speaker 1: guys who is later charged with detonating the car bomb.
Speaker 1: Cardona responded calling this report baseless, conjecture and outright fabrication. Officially,
Speaker 1: Kurt Ferugia, spokesperson for the Maltese government, stated, the government
Speaker 1: is confident that anyone else responsible will be found and
Speaker 1: brought to justice. We continue to support all efforts by
Speaker 1: the police and investigating magistrate to find the truth. Malta
Speaker 1: is committed to upholding human rights, freedom of speech, the
Speaker 1: protection of journalist and the rule of law. Who who
Speaker 1: doesn't agree?
Speaker 2: It sounds like great pr But you know, Galizia's family
Speaker 2: does not agree with this, I think fairly obviously. And
Speaker 2: we know this because Matthew her Son was quoted in
Speaker 2: The Atlantic who. By the way, Matthew is a Pulitzer
Speaker 2: Prize winning journalist. Pretty awesome. Apple did not fall far
Speaker 2: from the tree there, but he, Matthew and his two
Speaker 2: brothers have been lobbying European lawmakers and like all these
Speaker 2: international organizations for months and months and months, trying to
Speaker 2: call attention to problems within the investigation itself. So let's
Speaker 2: look at that quote. Matthew said, my mother was assassinated
Speaker 2: for reporting on corruption in Malta and He also sent
Speaker 2: out a tweet on the anniversary of her death. He said,
Speaker 2: the people who did it are still free. They sit
Speaker 2: in parliament and on private jets. It's this simple.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's heavy hitting. The investigation continues, as does
Speaker 1: on some level, the cover up.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Some people are a little more optimistic than others and
Speaker 1: think that ultimately the brains behind the operation will be
Speaker 1: named or brought to justice. But for many other people, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this is just another day in Malta. I know, not
Speaker 1: to sound Chinatown about.
Speaker 2: It, well in it it's also another day in the
Speaker 2: upper echelons of power and influence.
Speaker 1: It's true. That is absolutely true. At this point, that's
Speaker 1: where the story ends. For now, it continues, and hopefully
Speaker 1: one day we can come back with an update showing
Speaker 1: that justice was served. But for now we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. Why do you think these financial crimes
Speaker 1: and these sorts of assassinations coming go so quickly in
Speaker 1: the news. Why do you think there's not more following
Speaker 1: up on the Panama papers here in the United States?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Please, we want to know those things. Do you
Speaker 2: think it had something to do with the connection or
Speaker 2: maybe a crossroad somewhere between politics and organized crime. We'd
Speaker 2: like to hear from you if you know anything. Be
Speaker 2: very careful about writing to us, but we would love
Speaker 2: to hear it. You know. If not, send it to
Speaker 2: a journalist somewhere within your country, just do it carefully.
Speaker 2: If you want to find us on social media and
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Speaker 1: That's true. It is at Ben Bolan in a burst
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