Court orders presentation of Caruana Galizia tax returns

A judge has given the heirs of murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia three weeks to present her tax returns after upholding a request by lawyer Peter Caruana Galizia that the acts of the €5 million case for damages her family filed against the alleged financer of his wife’s murder, Yorgen Fenech, be kept in the judge’s chambers, out of reach of the public.

In separate criminal proceedings, Fenech stands accused of complicity in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in a car bomb outsider her home in 2017. The family of the slain journalist are suing business magnate Fenech for €5 million in damages.

Last year, the family filed a €5 million garnishee order against Fenech and 57 of his companies, which was provisionally upheld by the court in February.

In a sitting last month, Fenech’s lawyer Anna Mallia requested copies of DaphneCaruana Galizia’s tax returns so as to verify the amount of damages being claimed by her family.

As the case resumed before madam justice Anna Felice this afternoon, Mallia objected to the request that the acts of the case be stored in the judge’s chambers, saying that it was a case of “two weights and two measures”. The acts relating to civil cases for damages are normally kept in the court's registry and are accessible to the public.

Caruana Galizia informed the court that the scope of the garnishee had been narrowed down from 57 to less than 10 companies, after it emerged that Fenech was not a direct shareholder in some of them as well as other issues.

Mallia told the court that the murdered journalist’s declared income, presented in an affidavit by her husband, “should reflect what was declared to the Commissioner for Inland Revenue.”

“According to the defendants, in the previous sitting they had said that they had reached an agreement with the Commissioner for Inland Revenue regarding this income,” she said.

“The court cannot make itself complicit in money laundering, as money not declared to the taxman is dirty money,” Mallia added, earning herself a rebuke from the judge for the comment.

Caruana Galizia’s lawyer Joe Zammit Maempel told the judge that an agreement with the Commissioner for Inland Revenue was to pay a lump sum. “Copies of the returns were not found. The agreement was that a total sum is paid,” he said.

He reminded the court that Caruana Galizia had declared on oath that he had been unable to find a copy of his late wife’s income tax returns and that he was not in a position to produce them

Caruana Galizia bound himself to look for the documentation again, with the court giving him three weeks to present them in the acts of the case, which continues next month.