Speaker 1: Malta's institutions are deliberately being undermined, weakened and destroyed to
Speaker 1: allow corruption and criminality to flourish. Those who voted for
Speaker 1: this mess have a great deal to be ashamed of.
Speaker 2: Strasbourg. The European Parliament Clean Recession of twenty fourth of
Speaker 2: October twenty seventeen. Parliament President Antonio Tajani approaches the central
Speaker 2: podium and signals for quiet. Comes as President.
Speaker 3: Gome Chittadino, as a citizen com journalista, as a journalist, Volo.
Speaker 2: Esprit used to express my indignation.
Speaker 3: Indign brutal at the brutal assassination Didne Gwana Galizi.
Speaker 2: Of Deafnite Karwana Galitzia.
Speaker 4: This is not normal business for the European Parliament. It's
Speaker 4: rare for the Parliament to discuss an individual murder case
Speaker 4: in one of its member states, but today it's happening.
Speaker 3: Quiborns her family and the galleries, her husband, her three sons,
Speaker 3: and I wish to say to them that we stand
Speaker 3: alongside them, along with thousands of Montice are demonstrated in
Speaker 3: the streets.
Speaker 4: The camera pans up to the observer's gallery, showing Daphne's widower,
Speaker 4: Pisa and her three sons Matthew, Andrew and Paul, sitting
Speaker 4: together dressed in suits and ties, blank faced, barely begun
Speaker 4: to grieve. It's just ten days since Daphne's murder. Daphne's
Speaker 4: middle son, Andrew, still remembers this speech.
Speaker 5: Yes, I remember it. It's actually strangely nice to see
Speaker 5: this again and everaged it.
Speaker 4: It's impossible to imagine the strength that it must take
Speaker 4: for the family to be traveling and campaigning for justice
Speaker 4: before Daphnitely has even been buried. But this parliamentary session
Speaker 4: in Strasbourg does matter for us.
Speaker 5: That was a turning point when we moved from grieving
Speaker 5: to campaigning.
Speaker 6: It was a very conscious decision.
Speaker 5: It was against everything that our emotions were telling us
Speaker 5: to do, so suddenly we were transformed from a grieving
Speaker 5: family into essentially professional lobbyists.
Speaker 2: That switch from grief to campaigning is the first step
Speaker 2: in a new and unusual strategy to bring Daphne's killers
Speaker 2: to justice, a strategy to short circuit the usual channels
Speaker 2: of Mota's compromised institutions and divided culture. But it takes
Speaker 2: its toll.
Speaker 5: We were turning up with speaking points about the rule
Speaker 5: of law in the country, about the corruption crisis, and
Speaker 5: in doing so, we were in a way dehumanizing our
Speaker 5: own mother. We were turning her into a case, and
Speaker 5: we were turning ourselves into campaigners rather than grieving sons.
Speaker 2: So far, we've heard about two routes for Dafnese killers
Speaker 2: to be caught, First through the official police investigation, second
Speaker 2: through political pressure from the protest movement in Dafnese's memory,
Speaker 2: the sit ins and marches in Valletta and the gatherings
Speaker 2: at the Great Siege Monument, the sense of raw anger
Speaker 2: among ordinary Matese people. But the family know that on
Speaker 2: their own both these approaches are flawed, open to political manipulation,
Speaker 2: to corruption, to media blackouts and crackdowns by the Maltese
Speaker 2: government here in Strasbourg. On the international stage, the odds
Speaker 2: might be different here in Strasbourg Moreta's elite might find
Speaker 2: it more difficult to stack the deck in their favor.
Speaker 4: Ultimately, this new strategy will produce breakthroughs in the case
Speaker 4: that would never have happened otherwise, and will bring the
Speaker 4: family close of an ever to finding out who ordered
Speaker 4: Japanese murder.
Speaker 3: No silin and we will not remain Sanscobert, we must.
Speaker 2: See the perpetrators of this murder brought to justice. From
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts, Topic studios and vespoci. I'm Manuel Delia and
Speaker 2: I'm John Sweeney and this is Crooks Everywhere, Episode seven,
Speaker 2: The bad Signal.
Speaker 4: Sir Dafne is have decided to try and make this
Speaker 4: a global story. I know from experience that isn't easy.
Speaker 4: Foreign news, except for wars, rarely makes the front page
Speaker 4: in London, Paris or New York.
Speaker 2: And the family are painfully aware of that, aware that
Speaker 2: the new cycle will soon move on from their mother's death,
Speaker 2: so they have to strike quickly.
Speaker 4: I worked on the story of Daphne's murder for the BBC.
Speaker 4: I knew that from the point of view of my bosses,
Speaker 4: this was a compelling story they wanted to cover, but
Speaker 4: not one that could take up too much of the spotlight.
Speaker 4: As the months wore on, the chances of identifying the
Speaker 4: perpetrators seemed pretty slim. An unsolvable murder in a small
Speaker 4: European country. Next item.
Speaker 2: Please all that said, I think Daphne's family do have
Speaker 2: one ease of their sleeve.
Speaker 7: I've worked on a number of cases over the years
Speaker 7: of campaigns for justice for journalists who have been killed.
Speaker 2: Robert Vincent works for Reporters with Borders, a charity that
Speaker 2: advocates for persecuted journalists around.
Speaker 7: The world, and I often work closely with families in
Speaker 7: these campaigns. Not every family is able to speak out
Speaker 7: in this way. In fact, the way that they've been
Speaker 7: able to organize and really sustain this effer over so
Speaker 7: many years is highly unusual.
Speaker 2: The ace of the sleeve is the family itself, and
Speaker 2: there's set of skills.
Speaker 7: So Matthew was an award winning journalist. I think he
Speaker 7: had already been part of a team that won a Pulitzer.
Speaker 2: And then there's Andrew Dafnie Middleson, who we've already heard from.
Speaker 7: Andrew is always known as the diplomat because he had
Speaker 7: in fact been a diplomat for some time, and personality wise,
Speaker 7: of the three, he is definitely the diplomatic one. He
Speaker 7: is very kind and very gracious.
Speaker 2: Paul, the youngest brother, was at that time living in
Speaker 2: London and later also became an award winning journalist and
Speaker 2: the author of Dafnie's biography.
Speaker 4: So a diplomat and two journalists, all with international connections.
Speaker 2: Dephnie's husband Peter and her sister Corinne are also essential
Speaker 2: team members. He is a lawyer and she's a pr consultant,
Speaker 2: also useful skills. This is Andrew the diplomat, And what.
Speaker 5: Me and my family realized very early on in Malta
Speaker 5: was that international pressure was not only our only hope
Speaker 5: because the domestic environment was just so difficult, but that
Speaker 5: it was actually our most powerful lever, more powerful than say,
Speaker 5: the opposition party, more powerful than what was left of
Speaker 5: the press in Malta.
Speaker 4: But that raises the same question, how do you get
Speaker 4: the rest of the world to care about a murder
Speaker 4: in Malta.
Speaker 2: One possibility is the focus on the European Union's idea
Speaker 2: of itself, the idea of Europe as a place of democracy,
Speaker 2: rule of law, and freedom of the press, a place
Speaker 2: where it matters if journalists are murdered.
Speaker 5: Malta is such a small country, it's so dependent on
Speaker 5: new membership.
Speaker 2: Bluntly, we Maltese need Europe more than Europe needs.
Speaker 5: Us, but so so dependent on international partnerships that it's
Speaker 5: a unique example where international pressure can actually overcome domestic resistance.
Speaker 2: One really important example our economy depends on international finance
Speaker 2: being based here. And if the EU decides that Malta
Speaker 2: is no longer a stable, well governed member of the Union,
Speaker 2: or even publicly criticizes how the country is run, then
Speaker 2: those rich international investors might go elsewhere.
Speaker 4: Which means a public tribute to Japanese's work in the
Speaker 4: European Parliament might have real financial consequences.
Speaker 2: So the first weeks after Dapnese's death go by, the
Speaker 2: street protests build, and at this point the FBI come
Speaker 2: in to investigate the forensic trail left by the killers,
Speaker 2: and men like Melvin the Middleman, mister alleged Mastermind, and
Speaker 2: the Georgia's become increasingly worried, gradually realizing that this isn't
Speaker 2: just another local car bombing that will ultimately be ignored
Speaker 2: by the police.
Speaker 4: And that's when Daphne's family decide to make solving Daphanese
Speaker 4: murder a global cause for journals.
Speaker 2: Everywhere and here Daphne's son, Matthew the journalist, has a
Speaker 2: piece of luck. An international organization has just been formed
Speaker 2: that was designed for exactly the situation.
Speaker 6: An organization called Forbidden Stories.
Speaker 2: The idea is that when a journalist is persecuted or murdered,
Speaker 2: a global bet signal is sent out to other investigative
Speaker 2: reporters around the world to take on the same stories
Speaker 2: and follow them to their true conclusions.
Speaker 6: Because we thought that the stories should not die with
Speaker 6: the people.
Speaker 4: So by murdering Daphne, her killers are multiplying theumber of
Speaker 4: reporters on the case.
Speaker 2: Attracting even more attention to her work and her stories,
Speaker 2: and seeing if those stories might yield clues as to
Speaker 2: who wanted her dead, who the real mister allegit mastermind
Speaker 2: might be. The journalists that forbidden stories called their new
Speaker 2: journalistic coalition the Deafnite Project, and they start by digging
Speaker 2: deep into Dafnie's archive of old investigations.
Speaker 6: When Dafnit was killed, this was the natural thing to
Speaker 6: do after that was to say, okay, this is the
Speaker 6: first case. This is what we have to do. Now,
Speaker 6: this is our case. Let's try to assemble a team
Speaker 6: of journalists. Let's go to Marta. Let's try to tell
Speaker 6: her story. Let's try to see that the people who
Speaker 6: killed her and who wanted her stories to die, that
Speaker 6: they don't get away with that, that the stories are
Speaker 6: still going to see the light of day, and that
Speaker 6: they're going to be punished.
Speaker 2: The hope of the Deafney project is that clues to
Speaker 2: her murder might lie in some of the stories she investigated,
Speaker 2: and it turned out that hunch was correct. Within her
Speaker 2: blog posts there is in fact a faint trail leading
Speaker 2: to the likely masterminds of her murder, and mister allegit
Speaker 2: mastermind in particular.
Speaker 1: Feb Second, twenty sixteen. If the Panama hat fits, wear it.
Speaker 2: But the clues are deeply buried. I remember when Dafney
Speaker 2: published this blog post eighteen months before her death, the
Speaker 2: start of her most famous story. It was typical of
Speaker 2: her sense of mischief, being deliberately mysterious, playing with her public,
Speaker 2: and it worked. You'd be repeatedly checking the block throughout
Speaker 2: the day to see if all had been revealed on
Speaker 2: the surface. This post strangely seemed to be all about hats.
Speaker 1: Conrad Mitzi has found a hat that fits him.
Speaker 4: It includes a large stop photo of a Panama hat,
Speaker 4: a kind of straw some hat. The text is made
Speaker 4: up of cryptic and sarcastic messages about a government minister
Speaker 4: called Conrad Mitzi, Walter's Health and Energy minister.
Speaker 1: Take this as a genuine warning, I am not at
Speaker 1: liberty to say more for the time being, because if
Speaker 1: I were then rest assured that I would.
Speaker 2: Twenty minutes later I definitely posted another puzzle. This one
Speaker 2: had a picture of acute lamb and a few paragraphs
Speaker 2: wandering out loud whether mister Mitzi would be eating New
Speaker 2: Zealand lamb at Easter.
Speaker 1: When I say I have an international, worldwide network of spies,
Speaker 1: I'm not quite joking, but sadly I can't say more
Speaker 1: for now, though I'm bursting.
Speaker 2: Too hats lambs. The government minister the truth was definitely
Speaker 2: had got access to an incredible scoope through her son
Speaker 2: Matthew's work. You might remember the Panama Papers, a huge
Speaker 2: global story where millions of confidential finds from a secret
Speaker 2: of firm in Panama were leaked to the press. What
Speaker 2: we now know is that Daphanie had got an early viewing.
Speaker 4: The Panama Papers were a huge deal for the kind
Speaker 4: of work I do, investigations into corrupt regimes. They gave
Speaker 4: us a roadmap to the complex global arrangements that super
Speaker 4: wealthy individuals use to keep their wealth secret, how rich
Speaker 4: crooks avoid taxes and sanctions and money laundering investigations and
Speaker 4: journalists with questions. In my work on Putins Russia, the
Speaker 4: publication of the papers was a game changer, one of
Speaker 4: those rare times where for a moment, a whole hidden
Speaker 4: world is revealed.
Speaker 2: One hundred and forty three politicians from around the world
Speaker 2: were featured in the files, including twelve national leaders, from
Speaker 2: the then Prime Minister of Iceland to the then President
Speaker 2: of Ukraine. But it wasn't just politicians. There were bureaucrats, businessmen,
Speaker 2: minor royalty, even the Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan.
Speaker 4: Of course, having a name churned up in the Panama
Speaker 4: Papers does not necessarily mean that the person committed a crime,
Speaker 4: but it does raise some interesting questions about what they're
Speaker 4: doing with these secretive accounts. And the country of Panama
Speaker 4: was significant because it was a tax haven with little regulation,
Speaker 4: a place which tends not to share financial information with
Speaker 4: most other countries, a place where you can park assets
Speaker 4: away from prying eyes.
Speaker 2: And Deafney's sneak preview revealed that the Panama Papers included
Speaker 2: significant information about Malta too. Health and Energy Minister Mitzi
Speaker 2: was featured in detail. Definitely had discovered that immediately after
Speaker 2: being elected, mister Mitzi had created an elaborate financial arrangement
Speaker 2: designed for secretly stashing assets outside Molta, a trust in
Speaker 2: New Zealand containing a company based in Panama. Layers upon layers,
Speaker 2: hence the references to New Zealand lamb and the Panama hat.
Speaker 2: It looked exactly like something someone might choose to hide
Speaker 2: large amounts of assets or funds.
Speaker 4: The global financial equivalent of buying a brand new piggybank
Speaker 4: and stashing it in a very very secret place, all
Speaker 4: on the day you get a new job.
Speaker 1: February twenty fourth, twenty sixteen. Conrad Mitzi's so called shell
Speaker 1: company was never declared to Parliament in his annual declaration
Speaker 1: of assets as a government minister, not in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: not in twenty fourteen, and not in twenty fifteen. And
Speaker 1: if he had told you that he had incorporated it
Speaker 1: in Panama, the many hundreds of people who work in
Speaker 1: financial services in Malta and the entire political class would
Speaker 1: know exactly why he did this.
Speaker 2: These are expensive bigurebanks. They cost money to set up
Speaker 2: and cost money to run. It would make absolutely no
Speaker 2: sense for someone to use an arrangement like this on
Speaker 2: the other side of the world to store a nor
Speaker 2: mil government salary, even a minister salary. This figure bank
Speaker 2: was built for something larger.
Speaker 1: No accountant or financial consultant would ever advise a client
Speaker 1: to incorporate a company in Panama if there are no
Speaker 1: extraordinarily significant assets to hold, and beyond that, assets which
Speaker 1: the client wishes to conceal from the authorities back home.
Speaker 1: Conrad Mitzi is in government now, but he is not
Speaker 1: going to be in government forever.
Speaker 4: And daphnely didn't stop with mister Mitzi.
Speaker 1: February twenty seventh, twenty sixteen. Breaking now, Conrad Mitzi and
Speaker 1: PM's chief of staff Schmbrie have exactly the same asset
Speaker 1: concealing structures in blacklisted Panama.
Speaker 2: Remember Teach Cambrie, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, the
Speaker 2: man who would later meet Melvin the Middleman for a
Speaker 2: dodgy job and a selfie.
Speaker 4: The Panama Papers revealed that he also had a secret
Speaker 4: piggybank ready to be filled up.
Speaker 1: The agreements that made Schambrie beneficiary of his trust and
Speaker 1: Mitzi's settler and protector of his were submitted together on
Speaker 1: the same date.
Speaker 4: The same date, which is to say, immediately after the
Speaker 4: Labor Party in Malta, one power suggesting that this might
Speaker 4: be a shared and coordinated effort to provide senior government
Speaker 4: figures with a place to keep extra earnings, almost a
Speaker 4: perk of the job.
Speaker 2: There was a third asset concealing structure revealed by Dafne
Speaker 2: another pigabank set up at the same time for a
Speaker 2: third individual, but in this case those involved had covered
Speaker 2: their tracks even better, That individual's name was not put
Speaker 2: in writing anyone in the paperwork that has been made public.
Speaker 2: One email says that the name will be communicated veribally
Speaker 2: over a Skype video call.
Speaker 4: I mean nothing says honest democratic government like a secret
Speaker 4: financial arrangement owned by a person whose name can't be
Speaker 4: put in riting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably not. An arrangement at your High Street bank
Speaker 2: account would allow discovering the secret identity of the unknown
Speaker 2: third person. The man or woman whose name couldn't be
Speaker 2: written down became a campaign in itself.
Speaker 4: So I think there's something we should address here. For me,
Speaker 4: the complexity of all these arrangements companies in Central America
Speaker 4: structures from New Zealand bank accounts without names is something
Speaker 4: that makes this kind of story really hard to report on.
Speaker 4: And yet the secret bribes and kickbacks that politicians take
Speaker 4: and businessmen give affect all our lives more than we
Speaker 4: realize this. Invisible money changes how our elected representatives act,
Speaker 4: who they obey, and twists and distorts the services we
Speaker 4: receive from governments. But I know that even when you're
Speaker 4: used to decoding this kind of corruption, the complexity can
Speaker 4: be overwhelming.
Speaker 2: Which company is within, which trust or paid for? Which
Speaker 2: are holding vehicle?
Speaker 4: And when I've realized this, none of this confusion, this
Speaker 4: fog machine is an accident. It's the whole point. The
Speaker 4: fog machine is wired to confuse the people who pay
Speaker 4: to hide their ill gotten gains. This way, they want investigators,
Speaker 4: reporters in the public to lose the thread, to get confused,
Speaker 4: and to get bored, to give up, and to turn
Speaker 4: the page to a simpler, clearer news story. And a
Speaker 4: lot of the time it works, and that allows the
Speaker 4: theft and corruption to and continue right under our noses
Speaker 4: all the bloody time.
Speaker 2: And that is exactly how it feels trying to pin
Speaker 2: down corruption in my country. You know it's there, sometimes
Speaker 2: you see something yourself, but so much complexity has been
Speaker 2: created around it that it's very hard to see the
Speaker 2: whole picture. And that was Deafney's genius and what made
Speaker 2: her so dangerous to certain people. She had the ability
Speaker 2: to dispel the confusion, to lay it out in terms
Speaker 2: that everyone could understand, and that gave the offenders nowhere
Speaker 2: to hide. Her writing about the Panama papers made her
Speaker 2: one of the most influential voices in the country.
Speaker 8: It's almost tangible in a sense.
Speaker 2: Here's Nicole Maelak, a journalist at the Multa Today newspaper.
Speaker 2: She was at university at the time. Definitely published the
Speaker 2: Panama stories.
Speaker 8: Everyone was talking about this because how can you not
Speaker 8: talk about it when you have a minister your chief
Speaker 8: of staff implicated and having sort of these shady accounts
Speaker 8: and Panama everyone's talking about it.
Speaker 2: The opposition party called Defnie Discoveries the biggest scandal and
Speaker 2: Maltese political history and anti corruption protest marches were held
Speaker 2: in the capital. Definitely attended as a hero.
Speaker 8: It didn't feel right to even like go to a
Speaker 8: university lecture because I remember going to university lecture and
Speaker 8: the mood was there. We couldn't do this lecture because
Speaker 8: all this was happening there was such a monumental sort
Speaker 8: of crisis.
Speaker 2: For a moment it looked as though possibly the whole
Speaker 2: government might fall. But Prime Minister Joseph Mouscat didn't do
Speaker 2: what Defni and the protesters were asking for. He didn't cave. Instead,
Speaker 2: he stood firm.
Speaker 8: It raised eyebrows. Obviously on one hand, it's like, what
Speaker 8: are they trying to hide? Like have you having secrets
Speaker 8: companies and Panama's definitely not on when you're when you're
Speaker 8: a sing minister. The Prime Minister at the time didn't
Speaker 8: exactly them to resign or anything.
Speaker 2: Conrad Mitzi at first claimed that he had done nothing
Speaker 2: wrong in creating the Panama and New Zealand financial arrangements,
Speaker 2: but later admitted that he had not declared the arrangements properly,
Speaker 2: a breach of Multie law. His explanations for his intentions
Speaker 2: and aims continued to evolve, sometimes in contradictory ways. He
Speaker 2: eventually apologized in Parliament for his actions. In the spring
Speaker 2: of twenty sixteen, Mitzi was moved to a different cabinet post.
Speaker 2: Keach Cambri had a different set of explanations for his
Speaker 2: pig Bank. He said that his arrangements had been the
Speaker 2: result of decisions taken by his business advisers on his behalf,
Speaker 2: and he stayed in post. There was no apology for
Speaker 2: his part. Prime Minister Mouscart mostly handled the scandal using
Speaker 2: the classic strategy for a populist leader. When pushed into
Speaker 2: a corner, he claimed the whole scandal was invented, a
Speaker 2: media conspiracy and attack on his supporters, the real people
Speaker 2: of Malta sound familiar fake news.
Speaker 4: When someone accuses you of a great crime, you don't
Speaker 4: deny it. You switch on the fog machine. You create
Speaker 4: multiple versions of reality. Some masses of people get confused,
Speaker 4: and within those versions you get your creatures to deny it.
Speaker 4: Take Stalin's man made famine in nineteen thirty three, which
Speaker 4: kills so many people. No one to this day knows
Speaker 4: how many. No one knows because no one counted. Malcolm Muggridge,
Speaker 4: one of a handful of journalists who try to tell
Speaker 4: the truth about the famine, wrote, one of the most
Speaker 4: monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the
Speaker 4: future will scarcely believe it ever happened. Likewise with Donald
Speaker 4: Trump and the insurrection against the Capitol. Likewise with Vladimir
Speaker 4: Putin and the murder of Alexey Navalni. Populists don't deny
Speaker 4: their crimes a switch of reality.
Speaker 2: And like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Joseph Muscat went
Speaker 2: on the attack. Pro government blogs and TV shows focused
Speaker 2: even more intensively on demonizing Daphne as an enemy of
Speaker 2: not just the government but of Malta itself. One recurring
Speaker 2: theme in pro government TV and radio was to describe
Speaker 2: or depict her as a witch, an evil older women
Speaker 2: with magical powers to harm others, particularly men. It's a
Speaker 2: method that's been used to put women back in their
Speaker 2: place for thousands of years, and it's still going strong today.
Speaker 2: But the approach of trying to discredit Daphne was harder
Speaker 2: to sustain when the International Panama Papers team published their
Speaker 2: own findings and confirmed everything that she had written. When
Speaker 2: Conrad Mitzi was eventually moved to a different post, Prime
Speaker 2: Minister Mouscat explained his DESI the Panama affair hurt us
Speaker 2: politically and personally. He said, although there was nothing illegal,
Speaker 2: we expect better behavior and definitely had some feedback for
Speaker 2: those who questioned her integrity.
Speaker 1: March second, twenty sixteen, excuse my language. Here, but nothing
Speaker 1: else will suffice in this ridiculous situation. Total bollocks. Why
Speaker 1: don't these just go on themselves? How I got the
Speaker 1: information is irrelevant. What counts is the information itself. These
Speaker 1: asset concealing structures, once open and totally secret, could be
Speaker 1: used for the receipt of bribes, kickbacks and backhanders. Give up,
Speaker 1: it's over, big time.
Speaker 4: Sadly, it wasn't over. It was only just the beginning.
Speaker 4: But somewhere in Malta, Daphne's future killer, mister alleged Mastermind,
Speaker 4: was already taking notes. She'd got closer to his interests
Speaker 4: than she realized.
Speaker 2: To understand a little better just what definitely was discovering
Speaker 2: about this country. And so just a little trip to
Speaker 2: a beach in the north of Molta, a beach with
Speaker 2: a view of an island with a lot of history.
Speaker 4: So beautiful day. There's an island with barely a building
Speaker 4: on it, and just the chop there's an old kind
Speaker 4: of medieval citadel. Manuel, tell me this island in the middle.
Speaker 6: What's it called so?
Speaker 2: And what is it is called? Camuna? Probably a corruption
Speaker 2: of cumin. Maybe it used to grow there. It's an
Speaker 2: island right in the middle of the channel between the
Speaker 2: larger island of the Motese archipelago, Malta and the smaller one, Gozo.
Speaker 4: So why do you're checking me here? There's some kind
Speaker 4: of historical metaphor you're about to hit me over the
Speaker 4: head with.
Speaker 2: I know you I am. So you see on the
Speaker 2: side of the island. You see how the sea has
Speaker 2: eroded caves into the island, And that used to be
Speaker 2: for some time in the sixteenth especially the seventeenth, but
Speaker 2: in the eighteenth centuries a hideout for pirates. They'd be
Speaker 2: hiding stuff there. In any case, it was a pirate cove,
Speaker 2: a place of shelter.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I get the history lesson, But why exactly
Speaker 4: if you check me here today?
Speaker 2: Because I think this story from two three hundred years
Speaker 2: ago anticipates a bit what happens now. We still have
Speaker 2: treasures that need hiding, and the caves of today are
Speaker 2: a little bit different. So if you think trusts and
Speaker 2: financial instruments and offshore banking is complicated, just think of
Speaker 2: a dark cave.
Speaker 4: It's a good place to hide it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good place to hide for a while.
Speaker 2: Let the waters come down. People look away, and then
Speaker 2: you can come out in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: and take the stuff where you want it. You're parking,
Speaker 2: you're stolen stuff for a while, keep it hidden, and
Speaker 2: then bring it out when it's safe to do so.
Speaker 4: Aha. So listen, I mean, if we went across and
Speaker 4: found these eighteenth century caves, you'd hear an echo, and
Speaker 4: there's an echo of the past. So the whole country,
Speaker 4: the whole archipelago, is a place where there are echoes
Speaker 4: from the past. And if you listen carefully enough to
Speaker 4: those echoes from the past, I tell you something about
Speaker 4: now the twenty first century. More they do time for
Speaker 4: an ice cream.
Speaker 2: So years after the Panama Paper scandal, after Dafnie's death,
Speaker 2: after the Definite Projects send up their bet signal for
Speaker 2: other international journalists to start investigating her stories, Bastiano Bermeyer
Speaker 2: and the Definitey Project team find they had a problem Malta,
Speaker 2: too many pirates and too many hidden caves to look into.
Speaker 6: The big problem that we were facing in Morta after
Speaker 6: Dughness murder was that there were so many people who
Speaker 6: would want her dad essentially where to start, which is
Speaker 6: a crazy thing for this small island. So when we
Speaker 6: looked around and we thought would have a motive. You know,
Speaker 6: easily we counted to four or five, six very influential
Speaker 6: figures who did have a good motive to want her dad.
Speaker 4: This is the same culture shop for I experienced when
Speaker 4: I first learned about this story. And in fact we
Speaker 4: know that mister alleged Mastermind used this idea to try
Speaker 4: and reassure Melvin the Middleman at times, telling him that
Speaker 4: Definitely had offended so many people that they would never
Speaker 4: find the real killers.
Speaker 6: The biggest issue was that we were following four or
Speaker 6: five stories at the same time, and literally each of
Speaker 6: those stories could have been the one that was responsibly
Speaker 6: the end for her killing, because one of the persons
Speaker 6: involved in that story would have said, it's enough now,
Speaker 6: we need to stop her now for good.
Speaker 2: But the scale of the task didn't deter the Definite
Speaker 2: Project's investigators. Teams from the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, newspaper,
Speaker 2: Francis Paper of Record, Lamonde, and Italy's La Republica, the
Speaker 2: news agency Reuters and others were all digging at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 4: And they did make progress. Stories that Definitely had hinted
Speaker 4: that were developed and taken further investigations into a corrupt
Speaker 4: scheme to allow wealthy foreigners to buy mult citizenship, for example,
Speaker 4: and revelations about corrupt gas fials with the ruling elite
Speaker 4: in Azerbaijan.
Speaker 2: In virtually every major policy initiative that was launched by
Speaker 2: Joseph Moscart's government after it came to power in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: Deafney reported shady dealings. Considered Defnie's reporting on the transfer
Speaker 2: of the management of some of Molta's public hospitals to
Speaker 2: private operators. Basically, the government would pay the salaries for
Speaker 2: medical staff and pay the new managers a daily fee
Speaker 2: to refurbish the hospitals and provide medical care. Defney had
Speaker 2: her own views about how the health system should be run,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't the bit that bothered her most. The
Speaker 2: government transferred the running of the hospitals to a shady
Speaker 2: sacials company, its owners, unknown, its financial basis and mystery,
Speaker 2: and with no evidence of any experience in running hospitals
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world. Muscat and his government promised the
Speaker 2: privatization of the hospital's management would improve the quality of
Speaker 2: healthcare for mortice people. Not what you'd expect socialists to
Speaker 2: be saying, but Muscat was no ordinary socialist. There were
Speaker 2: promises of rebuilt facilities, world class medical care services. Oh good,
Speaker 2: people would be flying to more that to have their
Speaker 2: scheduled surgeries done here.
Speaker 4: Jafneg denounced the scheme as a sham, a cover for
Speaker 4: some behind the scenes swindle. She didn't have all the details,
Speaker 4: but as usual, her intuition was on the money to
Speaker 4: coin a phrase. By the time she was killed, the
Speaker 4: hospitals had got barely a fresh lick of paint. Wards
Speaker 4: were abandoned, doors collapsed, roofs leaked. Months after Daphney was killed,
Speaker 4: the mysterious managers of the hospitals went bust. The governments
Speaker 4: had a contractual right to claim the hospital's back, but
Speaker 4: they didn't do that.
Speaker 2: No, the faceless and ostensibly bankrupt managers of the hospitals
Speaker 2: were allowed to sell the concession on. The new managers
Speaker 2: would be a recognized healthcare brand from America.
Speaker 4: Did the hospitals get their fresh lick of paint?
Speaker 2: Barely a drop? That's at the same time as between them,
Speaker 2: the first private hospital managers and their American successors collected
Speaker 2: nearly half a billion euro in payments from the mortis authorities.
Speaker 4: In those first six months after Daphne was killed, reporters
Speaker 4: from the Daphne Project found the stories about passports for crooks,
Speaker 4: blindingly expensive gas steals, and abandoned hospitals interesting, to be sure,
Speaker 4: but there was nothing that pointed clearly to the real
Speaker 4: culprit in Daphne's murder. For now, mister alleged mastermind could
Speaker 4: rest easy. The stalemate must have been frustrating for the
Speaker 4: Daphne Project and Daphne's other supporters like you Manuel.
Speaker 2: It was it almost seemed that the grand strategy of
Speaker 2: Daphne's family to use international pressure and international journalism to
Speaker 2: find Daphne's killer was leading nowhere. On that one measure,
Speaker 2: the bat signal hadn't worked. But there was one question
Speaker 2: that hadn't yet been explored, and it also concerned the
Speaker 2: Panama Papers. Daphanie's reporting had proved that two senior government
Speaker 2: ministers and another unnamed person had all simultaneously created elaborate
Speaker 2: hidden piggybanks to hide assets in. But what she hadn't
Speaker 2: revealed was why, What was the big payday that these
Speaker 2: politicians were expecting to receive and from whom? And solving
Speaker 2: that mystery will lead Daphne's family and Deafney Project straight
Speaker 2: to the man who is believed to have ordered her murder.
Speaker 2: The man we are calling for now, mister alleged Mastermind.
Speaker 2: For now, though mister alleged Mastermind has other problems, problems
Speaker 2: with the man he allegedly hired to do the killing.
Speaker 4: The strain of keeping this murder secret is beginning to tell,
Speaker 4: and the once unimaginable betrayal is now coming.
Speaker 6: That's next.
Speaker 2: Crooks Everywhere is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Topic Studios
Speaker 2: and Vespucci. It's reported and hosted by me Manuel Delia
Speaker 2: and John Sweeney. The senior producer is Leo Hornack. The
Speaker 2: producer is Maddie Hickish. Krish Denesh Kumar is the assistant producer.
Speaker 2: The story editors are Emma Federill, Matt Willis, and Philippa Geering.
Speaker 2: The managing producers are Thomas Curry and Rachel Byrne. The
Speaker 2: voice of daf Nick Carvana Galizia is played by Ciena Miller,
Speaker 2: acting direction by Christopher Houten, Multie voices by Mikael basma
Speaker 2: Jan and Pierre staff Raj. The executive producers are Johnny
Speaker 2: Galvin and Daniel Turken at Vespucci, Christi Gressman at Topic Studios,
Speaker 2: Katina Norvell and Nikki Etoor at iHeart Podcasts, Encienna Miller
Speaker 2: Marketing Leaders, David Wassermann. Audio recording by Tom Berry at
Speaker 2: Wardoor Studios. Audio mix and sound design by Joel Cox.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Andrew Botchcardona Alessandra di Crespo, Eddie Isles,
Speaker 2: and Andrew Carna Galizia