On Saturday, Keith Schembri, chief of staff of former Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, was charged with money laundering, corruption and fraud. A total of eleven people and twenty companies are being prosecuted for this. According to Maltese media, Shambri pleaded not guilty in court.
The former chief of staff is said to have paid 650,000 euros to a businessman who previously ran a company that ran the newspaper Times of Malta Own.
The deal was exposed by Daphne Caruana Galizia, the investigative journalist who was killed in a car bombing in 2017. She reported on widespread corruption in circles around Muscat, which was bound to end in the aftermath of the murder last year.
Shambari resigned as Chief of Staff of Muscat a few months ago after Jürgen Fenech, the alleged mastermind of the murder, gave his name. This businessman friend, who received gifts from him, is still awaiting trial. One of the three attackers pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Schembri was actually arrested last year in an investigation into the sale of passports to wealthy foreigners, a case that Caruana Galizia also wrote about.
