EXCLUSIVE | Schembri knew Theuma: Here they smile in a photo taken at his Castille office

Melvin Theuma, the middleman who allegedly conveyed Yorgen Fenech’s instructions to the killers of Daphne Caruana Galizia, was photographed together with the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff, Keith Schembri, at the office of the prime minister.

In a grainy copy of the photo obtained exclusively by MaltaToday, Keith Schembri can be seen smiling with Theuma, in what is his office at the Auberge de Castille.

MaltaToday has been told the photo, which its sources insist is authentic, could have been taken at around March 2017, in a meeting that was arranged by Fenech himself – now accused of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Behind the smiling pair, a photo of Schembri with Muscat, taken from the historic 2013 electoral victory.

The photo only serves to now confirm what Schembri had been hiding all along: knowledge of and intimacy with the prime suspects in the assassination of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizi, killed by a car bomb on 16 October, 2017.

MaltaToday has also been told that at one point, Theuma was given a government job inside the ministry of home affairs, in what was a short-lived stint but which this newspaper has been unable to ascertain concretely.

Theuma, a taxi driver and loan shark, was then already running a lucrative illegal lottery business, and was taking a cut from all the taxi work at the Hilton at Portomaso, the luxury housing marina which the Tumas Group built and where Fenech lived. A source said that Theuma simply took a cut from any taxi driver stationed outside the Hilton.

It was Theuma who met the three men accused of her murder – George Degiorgio, Alfred Degiorgio, and Vincent Muscat – to contract them for the hit.

Yorgen Fenech was secretly recorded on the phone by Melvin Theuma

And it was Theuma who recorded incriminating conversations with Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech on his mobile phone, during occasions where the taxi driver picked up Fenech to and from the airport.

It was in these conversations that Theuma expressed his concern with Fenech about the legal problems of the three suspects in getting bail from the courts, and where the sum of €450,000 was mentioned as having been paid for the assassination.

But all throughout 2018, as MaltaToday has already reported, Schembri was present in multiple meetings between the Malta Security Service and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, where he was privy to information that Fenech and Theuma were considered prime suspects in the Caruana Galizia murder.

[WATCH] Yorgen Fenech claims he has recordings and a contract implicating Keith Schembri

Schembri has since been released by police on suspicion of having played a part in the murder of Caruana Galizia, although Fenech has implicated him and even the prime minister in his bid to obtain a presidential pardon.

Theuma has been granted the pardon on recommendation of the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police.