Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Journalist Was Murdered Over The Panama Papers - The Daphne Caruana Galizia story

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

The Daphne Caruana Galizia case is a tragic example of the dangers investigative journalists face when exposing corruption. A fearless Maltese journalist, Caruana Galizia was assassinated by a car bomb on October 16, 2017, after reporting on government corruption, money laundering, and political scandals linked to the Panama Papers. Her murder sparked mass protests in Malta, eventually leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in 2019.

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Many have come here. None have survived. Predator Badlands, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, rated PG-13. So this journalist was, Kaboom, unalived with a car bomb because she exposed some government. corruption. The story is wild. And crazy enough, it starts in 1903 with this guy, Teddy. And Teddy is president of the United States and he really wants to unite the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans by building a canal. And so he bullies the country of Columbia into handing over

some of their territory and he has a canal built. Now this territory eventually becomes the country we now know as Panama. And that's great and all, but now Panama has a problem. It needs revenue and in order to generate revenue, it creates tax laws that help foreign businesses dodge taxes in their home countries. Now, what does all of this have to do with a car bomb? We'll get there. But first, we got to fast forward several decades to 1977, where this German lawyer creates this law firm there in Panama. And because of the tax laws there that I just explain, this law firm actually operates legally, but they're still kind of shady. Because their main thing is they basically help rich people hide their money. Now let's fast forward again to

2016, where something crazy happens. An anonymous whistleblower gets a hold of this shady-ass law firm's internal documents, and they leak them to the public. These documents are known as the Panama Papers. And these Panama Papers expose all kinds of shady, shit this law firm's clients are doing. And these clients are very well-connected people, like businessmen and politicians, world leaders, all kinds of powerful people. In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to just the people exposed by these documents. And of course, these powerful people are now really pissed off. In fact, they're so pissed off that they're allegedly willing to murder people over this. But we'll get back to that. First, we got to talk about

this woman. Her name's Daphne. And Daphne, she's a journalist at a local newspaper living on the small island of Malta. And as a journalist, Daphne is actually pretty gangster as fuck. She's exposing all kinds of corruption in Malta. She's writing about criminals and drug traffickers, any kind of corruption in politics. Daphne is there covering it in her column. Here's the problem with that, though. Malta is a pretty small country, about 500,000 people. So it doesn't take long for her articles to start attracting the wrong kind of attention. And the people she's exposing and their affiliates, they start confronting her in the street and they're sending her threatening letters.

Sometimes they even show up to her house. And they also go after her legally, suing her for libel, essentially trying to bury her in lawsuits. One time, when she's not home, I guess some of them capture her dog and unalive it? And multiple times people try and set her house on fire. But despite all this, Daphne doesn't quit. Even though she knows she has a target on her back, she is determined to keep telling the truth. In fact, over time, she seems to get even more bold, because in 2008, she decides to start her own blog. And unlike working at the newspaper, this blog will give her editorial control and all kinds of freedom to write whatever she wants.

And here is where everything changes, because she starts going after really powerful people in Malta. And like she starts writing about all the dirty money coming into the country and about all the politicians who let all this shady stuff happen. And of course, her blog blows the fuck up. Like everyone's reading it. And I mean like everyone in Malta. I mean, she's averaging half a million hits a day in a country with a population of a half a million people. But then things get even crazier. Because it's 2016 and an anonymous whistleblower gets a hold of a bunch of documents affiliated.

with a shady law firm in Panama, aka the Panama Papers. And as I said, these documents expose the shady business dealings of a bunch of very well-connected businessmen and politicians, and some of these powerful people exposed just happened to work in the Maltese government. And since Daphne is known for calling these turds out on their corruption, it is assumed that the anonymous whistleblower sends her the Panama Papers

because now she has them. And using the information she gets from them, she exposes a huge scandal in Malta, that a member of parliament had been doing some shady business shit in offshore companies. Then she exposes that Malta's own prime minister, the guy at the very top of the government, that he and his wife were also doing some shady business shit

out of an offshore company. She also exposes another huge scandal where the government had been selling Maltese passports in exchange for a million dollars. Like shit is out of control. But of course, now that she's blogging about all this, the backlash against her, a whole lot worse. Suddenly her friends stop inviting her to places because they're afraid

they'll get caught up in the consequences. A cafe she visits a lot suddenly gets raided by the police. And Daphne, she's always been totally brave about all this, but now she feels different. Now she's starting to get scared because she's starting to get full-on death threats. Not only that, the lawsuits against her are at an all-time high. Now she has 47, seven different libel cases pending against her. 47. But even so, nothing is more important to her than exposing the truth. So, she just keeps on blogging.

Until. One day, in 2017, Daphne's at home writing her blog. Then she finishes her post and she leaves the house and she gets in her car because she's got an appointment to go to. But she doesn't drive very far when suddenly, Kaboom, there's a huge explosion, and her car goes up in flames. And then, boom, there's a second explosion. And of course, all of this unalives, Daphne.

Because someone had placed a bomb under her seat. And here is actually an image of her car afterwards. And, I mean, as you can see, it's really messed up. There's like nothing left of it. Now, if you're thinking about how blatantly corrupt this all looks, I agree with you. But you know who else agrees with you? The people of Malta. because everyone is shocked.

And pretty quickly, there are huge protests in the streets and people are pissed off and they're holding up signs with Daphne's face on them. They want to know who ordered her assassination. In fact, it's such a big deal that they start calling on the prime minister to resign because of how he's handling this whole thing and what they see as his possible involvement. And in 2020, the prime minister of Malta, the leader of the country, actually resigns over this. That's how crazy it's gotten. Also, after some investigating, bam, three goons are arrested for Daphne's murder.

Here's one of the guy's mugshot, and here's another guy's mug shot. And I don't have a mug shot for the third guy, but here's a picture of him. Now, according to these goons, their beefed with Daphne wasn't necessarily personal. They were actually paid $150,000 euros to plant this car bomb

and carry out her assassination. So then you have to ask, so then who paid them? Who ordered? Daphne's murder. Well, so far, all leads traced back to a wealthy Maltese businessman, a businessman who had once been exposed by Daphne in her blog when she got the Panama papers. Allegedly, he ordered the hit. And then so police go to his yacht where he's chilling, and bam, they arrest him. And I don't have his mug shot, but here's a picture of him where he

totally looks like a bond villain. In fact, he looks like a bond villain in every picture I could fine of him. Anyway, the three goons plead guilty and one of them gets 40 years in prison, another gets 40 years in prison, and the third gets 15 years in prison. While the bond villain looking guy, he did go to jail for a while, but he's out now on bail waiting for his trial. That is wild.