Panama Papers Journalist Killed In Car Bomb Attack

© STR, AFP | Police and forensic experts inspect the wreckage of a car bomb believed to have killed journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia close to her home in Bidnija, Malta, on October 16, 2017.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist, who played a major role in the Panama Papers investigations, was killed by a car bomb on October 16.

Caruana Galizia, 53, ran a popular blog in which she highlighted cases of alleged corruption, often involving politicians from the Mediterranean island of Malta.

Police said she was killed as she was driving near the village of Bidnija in northern Malta. No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack.

Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whom Caruana Galizia accused of wrongdoing in her blog, condemned the killing as a “barbaric attack on press freedom”, Reuters reported.

Muscat was a significant target of Galizia’s reporting. She accused his wife of owning a suspicious offshore of a company in Panama. Muscat and his wife denied the accusations and sued Caruana Galizia for defamation.

The Panama Papers are a leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. The documents show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens.