Ex-MGA Chief Conviction Upheld for Tipping Off Casino Owner Murder Suspect

Former Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) chief executive Heathcliff Farrugia saw his upheld on appeal this week.

Farrugia was found guilty in May of unlawfully disclosing information he had obtained by virtue of his office and revealing professional secrets. That was for tipping off casino owner in September 2019 that an anti-money laundering investigation was about to be conducted at a rival casino.

Two months later, Fenech, one of Malta’s richest men, was arrested as he tried to flee the island on his yacht. He was charged with complicity in the murder of anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was killed in a car bomb attack in 2017.

Fenech, who at the time owned the Portomaso Casino in the resort town Saint Julian’s, is currently awaiting trial for the murder.

Analysis of Fenech’s phone after his arrest revealed conversations with Farrugia concerning rival casino operators that incriminated the regulator.

In texts exchanged between the two men on September 23, 2019, Fenech expressed his dissatisfaction with a recent money laundering review of the Portomaso Casino, which he said had tarnished the business’ reputation.

Farrugia responded by saying he would delay the release of the accompanying compliance report until a forthcoming investigation of Casino Malta, owned by Fenech’s business rival, Eden Leisure Group, was completed.

On Tuesday, Justice Neville Camilleri of Malta’s Court of Criminal Appeal confirmed Farrugia’s three-year suspended sentence, determining that the lower court’s decision had been correct.

As MGA chief, Farrugia was charged with overseeing one of the world’s foremost online gaming hubs. He resigned quietly in October 2022, shortly after police questioned him about his conversations with Fenech.

The Times of Malta has suggested the charges against Farrugia were initially hushed up to avoid tarnishing the reputation of the gaming industry.

Prosecutors believe Caruana Galizia was murdered because she was looking into a government contract to build a power station, which she believed had been corruptly awarded by the Maltese government to Fenech’s company, Electroglas.

She had discovered that a Dubai-registered company mentioned in the Panama Papers leak, 17 Black, planned to make a payment of $2 million to two offshore shell companies. These were owned by Keith Schembri, the former aide of then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, and Konrad Mizzi, the former Energy Minister.

Journalists who took up the investigation after Caruana Galizia’s death discovered that 17 Black was controlled by Fenech.

Brothers Alfred Degiorgio and George Degiorgio were each sentenced to 40 years in prison for planning and planting the bomb, along with their associate, Vince Muscat, who received 15 years.

A so-called middleman, Melvin Theuma, named Fenech as the mastermind behind the killing. Fenech claims Schembri was the orchestrator.

The scandal caused a political meltdown in Malta, laying bare the corruption endemic in the island’s politics and business sector and leading to Muscat’s resignation as prime minister.