Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech has been acquitted of complicity in the 2017 murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb after exposing corruption in Malta and abroad. A jury cleared him of both charges by an 8-1 majority following eight hours of deliberation, prompting jubilation from his family and grief from Caruana Galizia's relatives, who said the verdict showed the institutional failures behind her death remain unresolved.

Fenech, 44, one of Malta's richest men, had been accused of ordering the killing because Caruana Galizia was reportedly about to publish damaging information about a company he owned. During the trial he pointed the finger at his former close friend Keith Schembri, ex-chief of staff to then-prime minister Joseph Muscat, though police said Schembri was never a suspect and he denies any involvement. Brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio were jailed for 40 years in 2022 for carrying out the bombing, while Robert Agius and Jamie Vella received life sentences in 2025 for supplying the explosive device. Caruana Galizia, 53, was renowned for her work on the Panama Papers and corruption exposés, and her assassination triggered mass protests and Muscat's eventual resignation in 2020.