March 15, 2019 • 41 mins
The Panama Papers are a collection of over 11 million leaked documents exposing shady financial dealings from more than 200,000 offshore entities, some dating as far back as the 1970s. When Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia began connecting the dots between corruption in her home country and information in the Panama Papers, she may have finally crossed a line organized crime wasn't willing to tolerate -- in October of 2017, she was killed by a car bomb outside of her home. Today, the murder remains officially unsolved.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our
compatriot are Better Third is on a bit of an adventure,
but he will return shortly Better Third, Crucial, Third, Crucial Third.
In the meantime, they call me Ben. We are joined
as always with out a super producer, Paul Mission Controlled deconds.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
(00:46):
makes this stuff they don't want you to know a
little bit of true crime today, Matt, Yeah, very true
and very crime, yes, and very much ongoing. So long
time listeners will remember that back in the day we
had Alex Winter on this show. That's right, Do you
(01:08):
remember that? Well? Yeah, absolutely. It was one of my
favorite interviews we've ever done, one of the Bill and
Ted of the Bill and Ted's excellent adventure and what
was the other one? The Bogus Journey, Bogus Journey, Bogus
Journey featuring death. But he's not just some silly young
kid running through time and trying to finish papers for
(01:30):
a history class. No, that gentleman Alex Winter. He is
a documentarian and he has put out some great work.
One was on the Deep Web or the dark Net,
and that's what we interviewed him for. And this this
guy incredibly nice, very generous with his time. Pockets. I
think that's still my favorite part of the interview. Did
(01:52):
that make it onto the air, I don't know. I
think we may have cut that part. There was a
part in the interview just backstage off Mike. It was
probably off Mike because we're professionals now or were He
He said, hang on, guys, he's making a very good
point about something. He said, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I said what and then we heard ding in the background.
It's like I'm making hot pockets, like, don't eat him,
(02:15):
it's too hot yet. Just wait, wait for a second. Yeah,
the wait. It was the worst part. We really bonded. Yeah.
He did Deep Web, which was a fascinating exploration of
something that I think a lot of people get wrong
when they read about it in the news. But that
is far from his only film. He also released a
(02:38):
documentary recently on the Panama Papers. Yes, the Panama Papers.
This is a topic that we've done an episode on before.
In the past it was called money Mystery and Millionaires.
Very it was a very illiterated phase for us, Yeah,
it was. But the Panama papers were It's a very
serious thing. It was a leak, largest leak in human history,
(03:03):
something around eleven point five million files from dating back
to the seventies to or so. That's two point six
terabytes of data detailing these secret financial relationships and attorney
client privileged information, the kind of stuff you would never
ordinarily see. Yeah, it was dealing. You're talking about shell
(03:24):
companies and offshore accounts and secret just money moving, almost
laundering almost in some cases it was definitely laundry. Yes.
So this this all comes from a law firm in
Panama called Massak Fonseka. Yep, that's that's the one. And
um so you might wonder, well, why why on earth
(03:45):
would someone at Massak Fonseka send out that much information. Well,
there was a person who was identified as John Doe. Uh.
They were given to a German newspaper by this anonymous
person and then there was a landslide, essentially, a very
secretive landslide of information and people investigating kind of in
(04:06):
the shadows because this seemed like very dangerous stuff to have. Indeed,
indeed it did, because this involves over two hundred thousand
different offshore entities. And this John Doe spoiler alert folks,
that's probably not this person's real name. Canna. You know,
gonna go ahead and say, I probably agree, Yeah, yeah,
(04:27):
I wouldn't ordinarily profile but this, this character, this John
Doe person said that they themselves feared for their lives
because the nature of the evidence, just the facts, the
information that's involved in this league. In some cases it
(04:49):
confirmed long suspected crimes. We know this person is maybe
doing something very white collar like tax avoidance, but we
can't we can't quite prove it, we can quite follow
the money due to different um, different countries, ways of
handling financial transactions. That's a big thing, yes, And and
these types of financial transactions a lot of times in
(05:13):
our minds, I think collectively, we think of this as
something that maybe a drug lord would participate in, maybe
somebody who is doing some kind of illegal activity that
needs to, like we said, launder money for some reason.
But what we found out in these Panama papers is
that these kinds of activities are just kind of par
for the course, for anyone who has enough money, yeah,
(05:36):
above a certain threshold, it is normalized to engage in
these sorts of practices. And in our previous episode, which
you absolutely should listen to if you haven't checked it
out yet, in our previous episode, we explore how the
German paper came to find the safest way to disseminate
and analyze this info. We also found just how many
(06:00):
people had been to your pointment, how many people had
been named. These financial movements through shell companies involved athletes,
involved bankers, involved criminals you know, as in like drug
cartel overlords and stuff. But it also involves politicians. British
Prime Minister David Cameron was implicated in this, and the
(06:23):
Icelandic Prime Minister sigmundrgonlug Son had to resign. I believe
he ultimately stepped down. Also a lot of these transactions
that we see moving money from one shell company to
another to get the best tax position. That stuff is legal.
It's a legal thing. Um, yeah, then what are you
(06:44):
gonna do about it? Right? I mean, it's just we're
the big players of the world and this is what
we're doing. If it's if it's proven to be tax avoidance,
then it's illegal. If it's just moving money around and
make sure it's safe in Switzerland somewhere or animal that's fine. Sure,
it's just gambling. And you know, Vegas baby, that's what
(07:05):
that's probably what people say. That's what they That's what
they all say in Panama. Vegas baby, That's what they
all say. That's what they all say in the country
of Panama. And I'll say, Vegas baby. Why is this
a big deal though? If these things are legal, if
it's just a depiction of a confidential, yet still legal
(07:26):
financial process, what gives where's the beef? Because not all
of it is legal? That's right, Yeah, yeah, multiple cases
that transactions indicate some pretty heavy stuff. Perhaps most importantly,
the Panama papers show the clear process through which these
sorts of financial crimes occur. It's possible using this information
(07:50):
to follow money from point A to B, to C
to Z and so on. That is in itself extraordinary.
So from a criminal perspective, this exposes a large industry
built entirely to hide money. Whether it's a legal form
of tax avoidance, whether it's out and out fraud, whether
(08:10):
it's bribery disguised as a loan, which I thought was
interesting and and I think you're you're hitting the nail
on the head here, Ben. It's not even so much
about the players that are essentially the clients moving money.
It's about the system like the at Massa Fenseka that
was built to do this thing, the giant, I don't
(08:32):
know what we call it, the machine that ends up
processing everything. That's where that's that can be dangerous. Yeah,
that's that's what I'm thinking too. So for instance, let's
let's go with the an automobile analogy. All right, So
the people riding in the car, or are the people
named in these transactions gasoline or petrol or whatever, is
(08:57):
the money just get pumping in, Okay. And what the
Panama papers showed us was the engine. It took us
under the hood. And so we see how the money moves,
and we know it takes these people to certain places. Right,
And I don't want to overthink this comparison. Maybe the
passengers are the money. The engine is the machine that's
(09:21):
moving it to somewhere because the money is going places, right. Yeah. Okay,
then and you're you're you're spending money to do it. Yes, Okay,
that's right. So the the money is also the gas. Okay,
let's get a whiteboard. Paul, do we have a whiteboard? Wait? Wait,
Paul has been writing all of this down. He's just
been etching it into the wall. That's very helpful. We
(09:42):
are going to have to replace that to the Paul.
You know, it needs to be transparent. This terrible comparison
we've created should exist for all time. It wasn't that bad.
I thought it was great, but the release of these
papers was not great for the folks involved. It was
not all sunshine and rainbows on their end. No. Absolutely,
(10:03):
And you can kind of feel that Ben and I
are having fun in the studio and this is one
of those topics that is going to get very heavy.
We just I think that's something that Ben, you and
I do when we're talking about something that's pretty heavy.
Just give a little lightness to it, but prepare yourself.
That's true, that's true. This is a bit of the
I called it. I used to call it the MPR
(10:25):
story formula, but it's not not really MPR. It's more
programs that are on NPR, like the Moth or something.
So what you do is you start out with a
lighthearted statement or something very bold and one sentence got it,
and then you save the heavy stuff for the turn
at the end. And this is where we're approaching the
turn to our second half, folks, because when that German
(10:48):
paper student Deutsche is a Tongue, received the original leak
and they realized the size of the stuff they were
dealing with, they started, as you said, Matt, secretly asking
for help throughout the journalistic community, because we need multiple
sources to confirm this stuff is true. First off, that
we know this is even real. If so, how that's
(11:08):
a long, arduous, tedious process. And John Doe complicated it
because John John Doe, fearing for their life, had certain conditions. Yeah,
they could only or he could only communicate with them
and them back through encrypted channels, which is I would
say kind of standard for this kind of thing, is
very Edwards Snowden in a way, um, almost like digitally
(11:31):
putting your cell phone in the freezer. They could also
never meet face to face, so neither side would know
exactly I guess who they were talking to. Well, in
this case, I'm sure John Doe knew some of the
names of the journalists, um. And you could definitely see
through his actions, just how scared this John Doe was
(11:52):
about his actions and about the power that these papers held.
And as of today, we still know very very little
about this this individual or this group of people pretending
to be an individual. We simply know that they treated
this situation with enormous gravity, and we we still publicly
(12:14):
don't know their motivation for disseminating this this knowledge. But
as it turns out, John Doe, whoever he or she
or they may bee, was absolutely correct. This was indeed
a life or death situation. And the story continued after
we did our original episode. So what do we mean
(12:36):
when we say life or death? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
We'd like to introduce you to Daphne Carora Galicia. She
was born August. She was Maltese journalist. She was an
(13:00):
author and an activist, and she was also a just
a prolific blogger. Um the she's basically the I know,
you could call her a classic trope of the uh
no excuses, I'm gonna tell truth to power investigative journalists,
essentially just functioning on her own and with organizations. But
(13:21):
definitely you could you could read you could read her
passion for that kind of stuff in her blog and
if you're interested in it right now you can, like
as we're talking about this, yeah, you can go over there.
Let me just pull it up really fast. The website
is Daphne d A p h n E Caruna c
A r u A n A Galiza g A l
(13:44):
I z i A dot com and you can go
there right now and you can just see all of
these posts that she made, and like I said, you
can you can see her passion. And she spent decades
building her reputation in Malta and abroad, primarily for investigations
into what she saw as the corruption riddled government, society
(14:07):
and industry of Malta. She examined things like the link
between Malta's online gambling and organized crime, or something called
the citizenship by Investment scheme also known as golden visas.
And this, this one was an interesting one because this
happens in a ton of countries. This happens in the US,
(14:29):
This happens in the UK. If you pay a certain
amount of money, or you by paying, we mean in
some cases, if you invest in a company or something
at a certain amount of money, maybe a hundred thousand dollars,
probably probably more. I mean it sounds like it's a
good starting point, and then you get residency and eventually
(14:50):
you get citizenship. This is a legal thing. It's of course,
it's incredibly unfair. Most most citizenship requests that are granted
every year are not this. This is this is a
wealthy person's loophole. Yes, right, So the problem with a
(15:12):
happening in Malta is that because they remember the EU
UH there was concerned that they would they were essentially
selling passports to people who would be maybe unfriendly, unfriendly
to the West. But because they had an EU passport,
they could do things like travel to the US without
(15:33):
a visa, and they could also launder some money as well,
because with citizenship comes certain rights. Yes, she was on
the trail of all kinds of money laundering throughout her career. Um,
and also you know, kind of some other standard things
like nepotism within government, within corporations, um, government corruption, which
(15:55):
is an old standby, especially in Malta. Yeah, she was.
She was really speaking truth to power, and she paid
for it. Malta is not a large nation, that's right.
A lot of people know each other she was the
target of intimidation, lawsuits, threats of lawsuits for libel and
(16:15):
so on. For most of her career. She was rested
by the multi police force. Twice. Someone set the front
door of their house on fire, and that's that's really bad.
The worst one is that the the family dog, her
family's dog had its throat cut and it was laid
(16:37):
across her doorstep and then another dog got shot, I believe,
so there was a murder attempt on her life. In
two thousand and six, the house was set on fire
while the family was asleep inside. And according to her
son Matthew, these threats occurred on an almost daily basis,
So this is a very high stakes life. Every day,
(17:01):
thousands and thousands of people are following her blog Running Commentary,
and she's also a regular contributor and calumness for the
Sunday Times of Malta, the Malta Independent. And just to
point that out, what what Ben just said, they're the
Running Commentary. Is the name of the blog that we
mentioned earlier, Yes, yeah, yeah, the website is ww dot
(17:23):
dafne Carona Galizia dot com, but the name of it
is Running Commentary. So far we've painted the picture of
a fascinating journalist, right and the largest leak in human
history that we know of. How are they related other
than just accurate journalism. They're related because it turns out
(17:48):
that Galizia was the first person to learn about Panamanian
companies involved in various crimes by Maltese nationals and specifically politicians,
specifically politicians active politicians, politicians in power. And she had
put these pieces together before the Panama papers leaked. They
(18:12):
were transmitted to the German paper in they went public
in twenties sixteen. But she had figured out some aspects
of this, and the stuff she had figured out was
confirmed by these by by these Panama papers leaking. Yeah.
So back in February, seen she was talking about this guy,
(18:34):
Conrad Mizzy or Measy. He was a Multese government minister
and he had connections, or at least she's hinting that
he had connections to New Zealand and Panama. Two of
the places that we found in the Panama papers were
laundering money or at least involved in some of those things.
Um and then apparently uh he Mizzy revealed the trust
(18:56):
just two days after she started hinting at this stuff,
and he was claiming that, uh, it was meant to
manage his family's assets, which is one of like his
involvement with these things. And that is one very common
thing that we see. The very very wealthy a lot
of times have assets that are tied up in familial relations, inheritance,
(19:18):
things like that, massive amounts of money and they have
to be protected. And it's okay, all right, I was
just trying to be nice, Yeah, I get it. That
same month, though, in February, this journalist also revealed that
the Prime Minister's chief of staff a guy named Keith Shembre,
(19:39):
and the Prime Minister is Joseph Muskett at this time
owned they owned a similar trust in New Zealand, which
in turn held a Panamanian shell company. The leak confirmed
that Mizzy Conrad Mizzy owned a company called Herneville Incorporated,
and that Mizzy and this guy Sembri also opened another company,
(20:01):
Tilligate Incorporated. These companies were owned by the Orion Trust
New Zealand Limited, which are the same trustees of Mizzy
and Shimbree's New Zealand Trust and a couple of other things. Yeah,
so again, that sounds really confusing. Yeah, Basically, these guys
opened front companies or shell corporations, not necessarily front companies,
(20:24):
those are different things, but they're shell corporations that exist
in these other companies other countries. And that's what we
know for sure. That's what we know that has proven
that is true. And again Galicia was the person who
exposed this information in Malta, and she continued in twenty seventeen,
(20:46):
she alleged that another Panamanian company called a Grant was
owned by Michelle Muscott, the wife of the Prime Minister.
These allegations or what ostensibly compelled Muscott to call general
elections in and he still won. He still won the election.
(21:08):
The last blog post that Galizia leaves, the last sentence
of the last blog post that she would ever write,
says there are crooks everywhere you look. Now the situation
is desperate. Then on October it was the last time
(21:32):
Matthew Coruna Galiza saw his mother alive. This is this
is her son. She was out running errands. She was
just heading to the bank in her car, who was
a gray Peugeot eight. It's a type of vehicle. And um,
apparently a government minister had gotten the courts Uh, you know,
perhaps out of some kind of backlash. We I don't know, um,
(21:57):
but he had gotten the courts to freezer bank accounts,
and you was intending to fight for access to her
funds because it's her money. Then her son, seemingly out
of nowhere, heard an explosion. He was only about eighty
meters away from where this explosion occurred, and according to Matthew,
he immediately knew, at least he felt at least that
(22:19):
this was a car bomb and it was meant for
his mother. Yes, which is it is something that sounds
like maybe a strange conclusion to jump to right away.
I imagine the imagine there had to have been some
outward Um, I don't want to say paranoia. I mean,
(22:40):
I'm sure it would man manifest from the outside as
as paranoia, but from the inside, it was just knowing
the truth of her situation. Maybe this was also not
the first time even that year that a car bomb
had been used as a tool of assassination. This was
the sixth time. That would have been five have more
(23:01):
car bombing attacks, uh, some with survivors from one in
January September October. Uh. Yeah, it was a messy, messy business.
What we're saying is he would have also already have
heard about something like a car bomb being used this way.
(23:21):
So he's standing there, this explosion occurs, He's only eighty
meters away. He starts running down the road. He's barefoot.
He's frantically calling his mother's cell phone. He heard a
car horn blazing, he smelled burning fuel, and then he
saw it. It was his mom's car. It was on
fire and it was just sitting there on fire in
(23:43):
a field of wildflowers. And he apparently saw pieces of
flesh laying on the ground, and he certainly feared the worst,
and he was right. And then Matthew um her Son
recounted this horrific scene in a social media post. In there,
you know, within that post, he's he's speaking to the
(24:06):
authorities in a negative manner, saying that they allowed for
this culture of impunity to fester and inside Malta, saying
that this guy Joseph Muscat, these other people that we've mentioned, uh,
Keith Schimbrie, Chris Cardona, Conrad Mizzy, even the Attorney General
Peter Gretsch, and basically this huge list of police commissioners.
(24:29):
He was saying all of these people took no action,
and they were he was saying that they were complicit
in her death. It's true that being a journalist is
globally speaking, a dangerous business. Dozens of journalists are murdered
every year around the world, and usually we're seeing that
happen in places that are war zones or spheres of conflict,
(24:51):
or countries with a weak rule of law or weak
protections for freedom of speech. This was a massive shock
to a lot of people in the West because the
European Union considers itself a haven for journalism in many ways,
so this felt blatant, public and grizzly. It was not
(25:14):
just meant to remove a person, much like polonium poisoning.
It was meant to send a message. And I'm making
the polonium reference not to say that this was a Russian,
a Russian manufactured hit, but just to say, you know,
there was visibility was meant to be part of it.
(25:35):
It was condemned in editorials from some of the most
widely followed, well respected news sources around the world. You know,
all the hits, The New York Times, CNN, Financial Times,
the Guardian, the Economists. I believe after her death and
International Consortium of Journalists launched the Daphne Project, which was
coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Forbidden Stories as a Paris based
(25:59):
organization dedicated to continuing the work of killed or imprisoned journalists.
Even Julian Assange weighed in. Yeah, he announced that he
was gonna pay twenty thousand euro reward essentially for any
information leading to the conviction of Coruna Galiza's killers. That's
a that's a huge deal that Julia Sanders would step
(26:19):
up and do that. Um Galiza's family then filed a
legal claim against the police force in Malta, and they
allege that the investigation or whatever investigation is occurring, has
not been independent or impartial because of connections between a
senior police investigator and a government minister. Because again all
those people she implicated and had things to say about there,
(26:44):
they have the potential to have influence within the the
law enforcement sphere and both were subjects of Coruna Gliza's
block exactly and where does this leave us now? So
the facts so far are that the pad Mop papers leak,
they confirm what a long time investigative journalist slash activist
(27:05):
has said in the country of Malta, and after numerous
attempts on her life, she dies. One of the murder
attempts works. So what what happens next will tell you
after a word from our sponsor. So fast forward. Ten
(27:27):
people were arrested in raids at dawn on December four
seen in relation to this murder investigation, which was at
the time quite controversial because the journalists around the world
and journalists support associations. The survivors of Galiza's death, they all,
(27:51):
they all are convinced that there is a cover up
a foot and you can't really blame them. Eventually, three
people were charged for the murder for committing the acts
of rigging a car bomb and detonating and his brother's
named George and Alfred di Giorgio and Vincent Muscott. Despite
(28:12):
all these protests in Malta and abroad, it appeared that
the government of the country was indeed factually was actually
dragging its feet in the investigation. The three suspects claimed
their arrest and searches violated their fundamental rights, which in
(28:32):
practice worked as a way of delay in the trial.
And now it leads us to the Panama Papers in
twenty nine because years after the leak, you have to
wonder how much this has actually changed the situation on
the ground. It's something you and I talked about in
the first episode of The Papers. I mean, these things,
these things blow up, right, and this information is revealed,
(28:55):
but those shell companies, except for a few agree to swinds,
are still around. Yeah. It definitely reminds me of the
financial crash of two thousand seven two thousand eight where
we we as a human people, saw the cracks in
the system and the blatant holes in the system and
(29:17):
the way the machine itself was rigged um and yet
nothing really changed. I think there there was one arrest
I could tell I know of, and maybe they're a
handful of arrests in that situation. And it's the same
with the Panama Papers. There was a man named Richard Gaffney.
He was He lived in Massachusetts. He was an accountant.
(29:39):
He was apprehended in two thousand eighteen in December. That
was the first The first arrest occurred from the Panama
Papers in the US in December. Uh. I mean there
have been there again, there have been a handful of
people who have gotten in various levels of trouble throughout
the world because of the Panama Paper, as some politicians
(30:01):
have stepped down at least in part due to the
Panama Papers coming out, or at least UM had to apologize.
I remember when David Cameron had this whole story. It
was the same thing with you know, this is my
family's money and it's just in a trust and we're
just moving it around Vegas. Baby. Yeah, there we go.
(30:22):
That's what that was what Cameron said, it's mostly his
black check money. Yeah. Well, but but the United States
is different from in Malta. Um, it's different from New Zealand.
It's different from in Panama where it's actually occurring. Um.
And in Malta there is a clear issue. Yes, we'll
(30:42):
put it simply. The people who are in charge of
investigating this murder are the people that Galizia was investigating
when she was alive, or they're closely affiliated with the
people that she accused of cover ups crime and even
thinks range into support a violent crime. It's like a
(31:02):
waterfall of paychecks. Basically, who signs your paycheck well and
goes all the way up, oh exact, turtles all the
way down. Yeah, and their terror all the way down. Perhaps,
and you can't blame people for saying there's something screwery
with his investigation. One I think when the Prime Minister
(31:23):
continued to pursue a libel case against against Galicia after
she was dead and said he would drop it if
everyone agreed that he that he's cool and he didn't
do anything right. Uh. And I'm laughing with a bitter
note here, because you see, at this point it's widely
(31:48):
agreed that these three men who are currently in custody
for this crime. Uh, it's widely agreed that they were
not the brains behind the operation. They are all they're
all slightly older, low level criminals, most mostly known for
(32:10):
their activity in the diesel smuggling business, which is a
big business at Malta. So who is at the top,
you know, someone who would be we were looking then
in that case, we're looking for someone who fits a
couple of descriptions or a couple of profiles. We're looking
for someone who has enough money or enough you know,
(32:36):
financial clout such that they would be a subject of
something in the Panama papers. They have to be shell
company rich, right, Probably not an elected official. It might
be a one step removed from elected officials. Sure, yeah,
it might be somebody who bought a passport, who knows
and travels internationally. But there's somehow involved in Altese business,
(33:01):
because otherwise Alicia wouldn't have run up against them, you
know what. A right, So it's someone who is probably
on international sphere, maybe in politics, but definitely closely related
to someone in politics. Let's say they at the very
least have an interest in Maltese governance, right, there were
some regulations, and they're not the type of person to
(33:25):
go out and rig a car bomb themselves. They probably
are quite possibly not to be unfair to this horrific
excuse for a person, but they probably don't know how
to rig a car bomb. I I would agree with that.
So the investigation and the cover up continues. We mentioned
(33:49):
earlier these three criminals had said their rights were violated.
As of February when we're recording this, it seems that
the trial may finally begin. That's right, begin, Yeah, and
and it's so it's good right that was seen when
they argued that their rights are being violated. Now, two
(34:12):
years later later, the investigations going on, the police are
actually trying to find more suspects connected with the murder,
so trying to go up that chain to see who
actually ordered it. And this includes people who are suspected
to be linked with the commissioning. That's, like we said,
the not the putting together the bomb, but the commissioning
of the bomb. And uh. Foreign investigators have questioned the
(34:36):
reluctance of the multest police to kind of keep that
keep this trial going and make it happen um. And
they've also questioned the reluctance of them to proceed against
more suspects because that's where it could get really tricky
for for the police themselves. That's where you get a
little True Detective season one, right, following up the chain,
(34:57):
up the food chain of crime. Yeah, it's believed that
there may be between three and five other people who
have who are known to the police, are known to
law enforcement, but have not been publicly revealed. The argument
being that they're not slowing up the investigation on purpose,
they just need to gather more evidence at this point
(35:19):
against controversial thing. A lot of people don't believe the story.
A lot of European news outlets still follow the investigation
and the trial. There's an Italian daily paper called lah
Republica and it's been following a um. It's been barking
(35:41):
up a specific theory tree that may be of interest
to people who are familiar with this case or just
learning about it. The suspects in the murder, the diesel
fuel smugglers. It seems a very strange and specific type
of crime. They apparently, according to this paper, have a
(36:02):
connection with someone called Christian Cardona, Malta's current Minister of
Economics Economy Minister. In the weeks leading up to Galicia's assassination,
this guy, Christian Cardona, was spotted in a remote bar
on Malta twice with one of the guys who was
(36:24):
later charged with detonating the car bomb. Cardona responded calling
this report baseless, conjecture and outright fabrication. Officially, Kurt Ferrugia,
spokesperson for the Maltese government, stated, the government is confident
that anyone else responsible will be found and brought to justice.
(36:45):
We continue to support all efforts by the police and
investigating magistrate to find the truth. Malta is committed to
upholding human rights, freedom of speech, the protection of journalists,
and the rule of law. Well, who doesn't agree it
sounds like great pr um, but you know Galizia's family
(37:05):
does not agree with this, I think fairly obviously. And
we know this because Matthew, her son uh was quoted
in The Atlantic who By the way, Matthew is a
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Pretty awesome. Apple did not fall
far from the tree there um. But he, Matthew and
his two brothers have been lobbying European lawmakers and like
(37:28):
all these international organizations, four months and months and months
trying to call attention to problems within the investigation itself.
So let's let's look at that quote. Matthew said, my
mother was assassinated for reporting on corruption in Malta. And
he also sent out a tweet on the anniversary of
her death. He said, the people who did it are
(37:49):
still free. They sit in parliament and on private jets.
It's this simple. Wow. Yeah, it's it's heavy hitting. The
investigation continue us, as does on some level the cover up. Absolutely.
Some people are a little more optimistic than others and
(38:10):
think that ultimately the brains behind the operation will be
named were brought to justice. But for many other people, unfortunately,
this is just another day in Malta. I know, not
to sound Chinatown about it. Well, and it's also another
(38:32):
day in the upper echelons of power and influence. That's true,
That is absolutely true. At this point, that's where the
story ends. For now. It continues, and hopefully one day
we can come back with an update showing that justice
was served. But for now, we want to hear from you.
Why do you think these financial crimes and and these
(38:56):
sorts of assassinations come and go so quickly in the news.
Why do you think there's not more following up on
the Panama papers here in the United States? Yeah? Please,
we we want to know those things. Do you think
it has something to do with the connection or maybe
a crossroad somewhere between politics and organized crime. We'd like
(39:21):
to hear from you. If you know anything, be very
careful about writing to us, but we would love to
hear it. Um. You know, if not, send it to
a journalist somewhere within your country, just do it carefully. Um.
If you want to find us on social media and
connect with us that way, we are at conspiracy stuff
(39:42):
in most places, at conspiracy stuff show on Instagram, then
you have a personal Instagram. That's true, it is at
Ben Bowlen in a burst of unbridled creativity at Ben
Bowlen h s W. No, it's at Ben Bowlen. Oh
that's awesome. I am not I have one, but you
will never find it right right, it's it's enormously difficult
(40:07):
to locate. You don't want to see it. It's just
pictures of my son and I. And if you don't
want to connect with us that way, you can find
our Facebook group. Yes, here's where it gets crazy, where
you can hang out with our favorite part of the show,
your fellow listeners. You. It's also a great spot to
pitch us and ideas for future topics, or to get
some feedback from other people about a weird thing you
(40:29):
saw in the news, because it's cool to crowdsource. That's
that kind of fact checking, you know what I mean.
And we have the greatest mods on the planet, and
we have some top notch mods. That's their MATTERI is
beyond compare. And let's say you're someone who says, yeah,
I've I've got something you need to know. I want
to tell you, but I'm more of an audio person. Well,
(40:52):
we have good news for you. You can call us directly.
We are one eight three s t d W y
t K. That's right, it's not that creepy. It's just
an acronym for stuff they don't want you to know,
and it becomes numbers. When you type it in your phone,
you'll see okay, so leave us a message there. We
will listen to it and it might get on the
(41:13):
show if you make it weird enough. It's like, make
it super weird. You're opening the door my friend s
creative with, is what I'm saying. Yeah, if none and
if none of that, fight bags your badgers, have no fear.
We are still squarely in the world of email. You
can write to us directly. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our
compatriot are Better Third is on a bit of an adventure,
but he will return shortly Better Third, Crucial, Third, Crucial Third.
In the meantime, they call me Ben. We are joined
as always with out a super producer, Paul Mission Controlled deconds.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
(00:46):
makes this stuff they don't want you to know a
little bit of true crime today, Matt, Yeah, very true
and very crime, yes, and very much ongoing. So long
time listeners will remember that back in the day we
had Alex Winter on this show. That's right, Do you
(01:08):
remember that? Well? Yeah, absolutely. It was one of my
favorite interviews we've ever done, one of the Bill and
Ted of the Bill and Ted's excellent adventure and what
was the other one? The Bogus Journey, Bogus Journey, Bogus
Journey featuring death. But he's not just some silly young
kid running through time and trying to finish papers for
(01:30):
a history class. No, that gentleman Alex Winter. He is
a documentarian and he has put out some great work.
One was on the Deep Web or the dark Net,
and that's what we interviewed him for. And this this
guy incredibly nice, very generous with his time. Pockets. I
think that's still my favorite part of the interview. Did
(01:52):
that make it onto the air, I don't know. I
think we may have cut that part. There was a
part in the interview just backstage off Mike. It was
probably off Mike because we're professionals now or were He
He said, hang on, guys, he's making a very good
point about something. He said, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I said what and then we heard ding in the background.
It's like I'm making hot pockets, like, don't eat him,
(02:15):
it's too hot yet. Just wait, wait for a second. Yeah,
the wait. It was the worst part. We really bonded. Yeah.
He did Deep Web, which was a fascinating exploration of
something that I think a lot of people get wrong
when they read about it in the news. But that
is far from his only film. He also released a
(02:38):
documentary recently on the Panama Papers. Yes, the Panama Papers.
This is a topic that we've done an episode on before.
In the past it was called money Mystery and Millionaires.
Very it was a very illiterated phase for us, Yeah,
it was. But the Panama papers were It's a very
serious thing. It was a leak, largest leak in human history,
(03:03):
something around eleven point five million files from dating back
to the seventies to or so. That's two point six
terabytes of data detailing these secret financial relationships and attorney
client privileged information, the kind of stuff you would never
ordinarily see. Yeah, it was dealing. You're talking about shell
(03:24):
companies and offshore accounts and secret just money moving, almost
laundering almost in some cases it was definitely laundry. Yes.
So this this all comes from a law firm in
Panama called Massak Fonseka. Yep, that's that's the one. And
um so you might wonder, well, why why on earth
(03:45):
would someone at Massak Fonseka send out that much information. Well,
there was a person who was identified as John Doe. Uh.
They were given to a German newspaper by this anonymous
person and then there was a landslide, essentially, a very
secretive landslide of information and people investigating kind of in
(04:06):
the shadows because this seemed like very dangerous stuff to have. Indeed,
indeed it did, because this involves over two hundred thousand
different offshore entities. And this John Doe spoiler alert folks,
that's probably not this person's real name. Canna. You know,
gonna go ahead and say, I probably agree, Yeah, yeah,
(04:27):
I wouldn't ordinarily profile but this, this character, this John
Doe person said that they themselves feared for their lives
because the nature of the evidence, just the facts, the
information that's involved in this league. In some cases it
(04:49):
confirmed long suspected crimes. We know this person is maybe
doing something very white collar like tax avoidance, but we
can't we can't quite prove it, we can quite follow
the money due to different um, different countries, ways of
handling financial transactions. That's a big thing, yes, And and
these types of financial transactions a lot of times in
(05:13):
our minds, I think collectively, we think of this as
something that maybe a drug lord would participate in, maybe
somebody who is doing some kind of illegal activity that
needs to, like we said, launder money for some reason.
But what we found out in these Panama papers is
that these kinds of activities are just kind of par
for the course, for anyone who has enough money, yeah,
(05:36):
above a certain threshold, it is normalized to engage in
these sorts of practices. And in our previous episode, which
you absolutely should listen to if you haven't checked it
out yet, in our previous episode, we explore how the
German paper came to find the safest way to disseminate
and analyze this info. We also found just how many
(06:00):
people had been to your pointment, how many people had
been named. These financial movements through shell companies involved athletes,
involved bankers, involved criminals you know, as in like drug
cartel overlords and stuff. But it also involves politicians. British
Prime Minister David Cameron was implicated in this, and the
(06:23):
Icelandic Prime Minister sigmundrgonlug Son had to resign. I believe
he ultimately stepped down. Also a lot of these transactions
that we see moving money from one shell company to
another to get the best tax position. That stuff is legal.
It's a legal thing. Um, yeah, then what are you
(06:44):
gonna do about it? Right? I mean, it's just we're
the big players of the world and this is what
we're doing. If it's if it's proven to be tax avoidance,
then it's illegal. If it's just moving money around and
make sure it's safe in Switzerland somewhere or animal that's fine. Sure,
it's just gambling. And you know, Vegas baby, that's what
(07:05):
that's probably what people say. That's what they That's what
they all say in Panama. Vegas baby, That's what they
all say. That's what they all say in the country
of Panama. And I'll say, Vegas baby. Why is this
a big deal though? If these things are legal, if
it's just a depiction of a confidential, yet still legal
(07:26):
financial process, what gives where's the beef? Because not all
of it is legal? That's right, Yeah, yeah, multiple cases
that transactions indicate some pretty heavy stuff. Perhaps most importantly,
the Panama papers show the clear process through which these
sorts of financial crimes occur. It's possible using this information
(07:50):
to follow money from point A to B, to C
to Z and so on. That is in itself extraordinary.
So from a criminal perspective, this exposes a large industry
built entirely to hide money. Whether it's a legal form
of tax avoidance, whether it's out and out fraud, whether
(08:10):
it's bribery disguised as a loan, which I thought was
interesting and and I think you're you're hitting the nail
on the head here, Ben. It's not even so much
about the players that are essentially the clients moving money.
It's about the system like the at Massa Fenseka that
was built to do this thing, the giant, I don't
(08:32):
know what we call it, the machine that ends up
processing everything. That's where that's that can be dangerous. Yeah,
that's that's what I'm thinking too. So for instance, let's
let's go with the an automobile analogy. All right, So
the people riding in the car, or are the people
named in these transactions gasoline or petrol or whatever, is
(08:57):
the money just get pumping in, Okay. And what the
Panama papers showed us was the engine. It took us
under the hood. And so we see how the money moves,
and we know it takes these people to certain places. Right,
And I don't want to overthink this comparison. Maybe the
passengers are the money. The engine is the machine that's
(09:21):
moving it to somewhere because the money is going places, right. Yeah. Okay,
then and you're you're you're spending money to do it. Yes, Okay,
that's right. So the the money is also the gas. Okay,
let's get a whiteboard. Paul, do we have a whiteboard? Wait? Wait,
Paul has been writing all of this down. He's just
been etching it into the wall. That's very helpful. We
(09:42):
are going to have to replace that to the Paul.
You know, it needs to be transparent. This terrible comparison
we've created should exist for all time. It wasn't that bad.
I thought it was great, but the release of these
papers was not great for the folks involved. It was
not all sunshine and rainbows on their end. No. Absolutely,
(10:03):
And you can kind of feel that Ben and I
are having fun in the studio and this is one
of those topics that is going to get very heavy.
We just I think that's something that Ben, you and
I do when we're talking about something that's pretty heavy.
Just give a little lightness to it, but prepare yourself.
That's true, that's true. This is a bit of the
I called it. I used to call it the MPR
(10:25):
story formula, but it's not not really MPR. It's more
programs that are on NPR, like the Moth or something.
So what you do is you start out with a
lighthearted statement or something very bold and one sentence got it,
and then you save the heavy stuff for the turn
at the end. And this is where we're approaching the
turn to our second half, folks, because when that German
(10:48):
paper student Deutsche is a Tongue, received the original leak
and they realized the size of the stuff they were
dealing with, they started, as you said, Matt, secretly asking
for help throughout the journalistic community, because we need multiple
sources to confirm this stuff is true. First off, that
we know this is even real. If so, how that's
(11:08):
a long, arduous, tedious process. And John Doe complicated it
because John John Doe, fearing for their life, had certain conditions. Yeah,
they could only or he could only communicate with them
and them back through encrypted channels, which is I would
say kind of standard for this kind of thing, is
very Edwards Snowden in a way, um, almost like digitally
(11:31):
putting your cell phone in the freezer. They could also
never meet face to face, so neither side would know
exactly I guess who they were talking to. Well, in
this case, I'm sure John Doe knew some of the
names of the journalists, um. And you could definitely see
through his actions, just how scared this John Doe was
(11:52):
about his actions and about the power that these papers held.
And as of today, we still know very very little
about this this individual or this group of people pretending
to be an individual. We simply know that they treated
this situation with enormous gravity, and we we still publicly
(12:14):
don't know their motivation for disseminating this this knowledge. But
as it turns out, John Doe, whoever he or she
or they may bee, was absolutely correct. This was indeed
a life or death situation. And the story continued after
we did our original episode. So what do we mean
(12:36):
when we say life or death? We'll tell you after
a word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
We'd like to introduce you to Daphne Carora Galicia. She
was born August. She was Maltese journalist. She was an
(13:00):
author and an activist, and she was also a just
a prolific blogger. Um the she's basically the I know,
you could call her a classic trope of the uh
no excuses, I'm gonna tell truth to power investigative journalists,
essentially just functioning on her own and with organizations. But
(13:21):
definitely you could you could read you could read her
passion for that kind of stuff in her blog and
if you're interested in it right now you can, like
as we're talking about this, yeah, you can go over there.
Let me just pull it up really fast. The website
is Daphne d A p h n E Caruna c
A r u A n A Galiza g A l
(13:44):
I z i A dot com and you can go
there right now and you can just see all of
these posts that she made, and like I said, you
can you can see her passion. And she spent decades
building her reputation in Malta and abroad, primarily for investigations
into what she saw as the corruption riddled government, society
(14:07):
and industry of Malta. She examined things like the link
between Malta's online gambling and organized crime, or something called
the citizenship by Investment scheme also known as golden visas.
And this, this one was an interesting one because this
happens in a ton of countries. This happens in the US,
(14:29):
This happens in the UK. If you pay a certain
amount of money, or you by paying, we mean in
some cases, if you invest in a company or something
at a certain amount of money, maybe a hundred thousand dollars,
probably probably more. I mean it sounds like it's a
good starting point, and then you get residency and eventually
(14:50):
you get citizenship. This is a legal thing. It's of course,
it's incredibly unfair. Most most citizenship requests that are granted
every year are not this. This is this is a
wealthy person's loophole. Yes, right, So the problem with a
(15:12):
happening in Malta is that because they remember the EU
UH there was concerned that they would they were essentially
selling passports to people who would be maybe unfriendly, unfriendly
to the West. But because they had an EU passport,
they could do things like travel to the US without
(15:33):
a visa, and they could also launder some money as well,
because with citizenship comes certain rights. Yes, she was on
the trail of all kinds of money laundering throughout her career. Um,
and also you know, kind of some other standard things
like nepotism within government, within corporations, um, government corruption, which
(15:55):
is an old standby, especially in Malta. Yeah, she was.
She was really speaking truth to power, and she paid
for it. Malta is not a large nation, that's right.
A lot of people know each other she was the
target of intimidation, lawsuits, threats of lawsuits for libel and
(16:15):
so on. For most of her career. She was rested
by the multi police force. Twice. Someone set the front
door of their house on fire, and that's that's really bad.
The worst one is that the the family dog, her
family's dog had its throat cut and it was laid
(16:37):
across her doorstep and then another dog got shot, I believe,
so there was a murder attempt on her life. In
two thousand and six, the house was set on fire
while the family was asleep inside. And according to her
son Matthew, these threats occurred on an almost daily basis,
So this is a very high stakes life. Every day,
(17:01):
thousands and thousands of people are following her blog Running Commentary,
and she's also a regular contributor and calumness for the
Sunday Times of Malta, the Malta Independent. And just to
point that out, what what Ben just said, they're the
Running Commentary. Is the name of the blog that we
mentioned earlier, Yes, yeah, yeah, the website is ww dot
(17:23):
dafne Carona Galizia dot com, but the name of it
is Running Commentary. So far we've painted the picture of
a fascinating journalist, right and the largest leak in human
history that we know of. How are they related other
than just accurate journalism. They're related because it turns out
(17:48):
that Galizia was the first person to learn about Panamanian
companies involved in various crimes by Maltese nationals and specifically politicians,
specifically politicians active politicians, politicians in power. And she had
put these pieces together before the Panama papers leaked. They
(18:12):
were transmitted to the German paper in they went public
in twenties sixteen. But she had figured out some aspects
of this, and the stuff she had figured out was
confirmed by these by by these Panama papers leaking. Yeah.
So back in February, seen she was talking about this guy,
(18:34):
Conrad Mizzy or Measy. He was a Multese government minister
and he had connections, or at least she's hinting that
he had connections to New Zealand and Panama. Two of
the places that we found in the Panama papers were
laundering money or at least involved in some of those things.
Um and then apparently uh he Mizzy revealed the trust
(18:56):
just two days after she started hinting at this stuff,
and he was claiming that, uh, it was meant to
manage his family's assets, which is one of like his
involvement with these things. And that is one very common
thing that we see. The very very wealthy a lot
of times have assets that are tied up in familial relations, inheritance,
(19:18):
things like that, massive amounts of money and they have
to be protected. And it's okay, all right, I was
just trying to be nice, Yeah, I get it. That
same month, though, in February, this journalist also revealed that
the Prime Minister's chief of staff a guy named Keith Shembre,
(19:39):
and the Prime Minister is Joseph Muskett at this time
owned they owned a similar trust in New Zealand, which
in turn held a Panamanian shell company. The leak confirmed
that Mizzy Conrad Mizzy owned a company called Herneville Incorporated,
and that Mizzy and this guy Sembri also opened another company,
(20:01):
Tilligate Incorporated. These companies were owned by the Orion Trust
New Zealand Limited, which are the same trustees of Mizzy
and Shimbree's New Zealand Trust and a couple of other things. Yeah,
so again, that sounds really confusing. Yeah, Basically, these guys
opened front companies or shell corporations, not necessarily front companies,
(20:24):
those are different things, but they're shell corporations that exist
in these other companies other countries. And that's what we
know for sure. That's what we know that has proven
that is true. And again Galicia was the person who
exposed this information in Malta, and she continued in twenty seventeen,
(20:46):
she alleged that another Panamanian company called a Grant was
owned by Michelle Muscott, the wife of the Prime Minister.
These allegations or what ostensibly compelled Muscott to call general
elections in and he still won. He still won the election.
(21:08):
The last blog post that Galizia leaves, the last sentence
of the last blog post that she would ever write,
says there are crooks everywhere you look. Now the situation
is desperate. Then on October it was the last time
(21:32):
Matthew Coruna Galiza saw his mother alive. This is this
is her son. She was out running errands. She was
just heading to the bank in her car, who was
a gray Peugeot eight. It's a type of vehicle. And um,
apparently a government minister had gotten the courts Uh, you know,
perhaps out of some kind of backlash. We I don't know, um,
(21:57):
but he had gotten the courts to freezer bank accounts,
and you was intending to fight for access to her
funds because it's her money. Then her son, seemingly out
of nowhere, heard an explosion. He was only about eighty
meters away from where this explosion occurred, and according to Matthew,
he immediately knew, at least he felt at least that
(22:19):
this was a car bomb and it was meant for
his mother. Yes, which is it is something that sounds
like maybe a strange conclusion to jump to right away.
I imagine the imagine there had to have been some
outward Um, I don't want to say paranoia. I mean,
(22:40):
I'm sure it would man manifest from the outside as
as paranoia, but from the inside, it was just knowing
the truth of her situation. Maybe this was also not
the first time even that year that a car bomb
had been used as a tool of assassination. This was
the sixth time. That would have been five have more
(23:01):
car bombing attacks, uh, some with survivors from one in
January September October. Uh. Yeah, it was a messy, messy business.
What we're saying is he would have also already have
heard about something like a car bomb being used this way.
(23:21):
So he's standing there, this explosion occurs, He's only eighty
meters away. He starts running down the road. He's barefoot.
He's frantically calling his mother's cell phone. He heard a
car horn blazing, he smelled burning fuel, and then he
saw it. It was his mom's car. It was on
fire and it was just sitting there on fire in
(23:43):
a field of wildflowers. And he apparently saw pieces of
flesh laying on the ground, and he certainly feared the worst,
and he was right. And then Matthew um her Son
recounted this horrific scene in a social media post. In there,
you know, within that post, he's he's speaking to the
(24:06):
authorities in a negative manner, saying that they allowed for
this culture of impunity to fester and inside Malta, saying
that this guy Joseph Muscat, these other people that we've mentioned, uh,
Keith Schimbrie, Chris Cardona, Conrad Mizzy, even the Attorney General
Peter Gretsch, and basically this huge list of police commissioners.
(24:29):
He was saying all of these people took no action,
and they were he was saying that they were complicit
in her death. It's true that being a journalist is
globally speaking, a dangerous business. Dozens of journalists are murdered
every year around the world, and usually we're seeing that
happen in places that are war zones or spheres of conflict,
(24:51):
or countries with a weak rule of law or weak
protections for freedom of speech. This was a massive shock
to a lot of people in the West because the
European Union considers itself a haven for journalism in many ways,
so this felt blatant, public and grizzly. It was not
(25:14):
just meant to remove a person, much like polonium poisoning.
It was meant to send a message. And I'm making
the polonium reference not to say that this was a Russian,
a Russian manufactured hit, but just to say, you know,
there was visibility was meant to be part of it.
(25:35):
It was condemned in editorials from some of the most
widely followed, well respected news sources around the world. You know,
all the hits, The New York Times, CNN, Financial Times,
the Guardian, the Economists. I believe after her death and
International Consortium of Journalists launched the Daphne Project, which was
coordinated by Forbidden Stories. Forbidden Stories as a Paris based
(25:59):
organization dedicated to continuing the work of killed or imprisoned journalists.
Even Julian Assange weighed in. Yeah, he announced that he
was gonna pay twenty thousand euro reward essentially for any
information leading to the conviction of Coruna Galiza's killers. That's
a that's a huge deal that Julia Sanders would step
(26:19):
up and do that. Um Galiza's family then filed a
legal claim against the police force in Malta, and they
allege that the investigation or whatever investigation is occurring, has
not been independent or impartial because of connections between a
senior police investigator and a government minister. Because again all
those people she implicated and had things to say about there,
(26:44):
they have the potential to have influence within the the
law enforcement sphere and both were subjects of Coruna Gliza's
block exactly and where does this leave us now? So
the facts so far are that the pad Mop papers leak,
they confirm what a long time investigative journalist slash activist
(27:05):
has said in the country of Malta, and after numerous
attempts on her life, she dies. One of the murder
attempts works. So what what happens next will tell you
after a word from our sponsor. So fast forward. Ten
(27:27):
people were arrested in raids at dawn on December four
seen in relation to this murder investigation, which was at
the time quite controversial because the journalists around the world
and journalists support associations. The survivors of Galiza's death, they all,
(27:51):
they all are convinced that there is a cover up
a foot and you can't really blame them. Eventually, three
people were charged for the murder for committing the acts
of rigging a car bomb and detonating and his brother's
named George and Alfred di Giorgio and Vincent Muscott. Despite
(28:12):
all these protests in Malta and abroad, it appeared that
the government of the country was indeed factually was actually
dragging its feet in the investigation. The three suspects claimed
their arrest and searches violated their fundamental rights, which in
(28:32):
practice worked as a way of delay in the trial.
And now it leads us to the Panama Papers in
twenty nine because years after the leak, you have to
wonder how much this has actually changed the situation on
the ground. It's something you and I talked about in
the first episode of The Papers. I mean, these things,
these things blow up, right, and this information is revealed,
(28:55):
but those shell companies, except for a few agree to swinds,
are still around. Yeah. It definitely reminds me of the
financial crash of two thousand seven two thousand eight where
we we as a human people, saw the cracks in
the system and the blatant holes in the system and
(29:17):
the way the machine itself was rigged um and yet
nothing really changed. I think there there was one arrest
I could tell I know of, and maybe they're a
handful of arrests in that situation. And it's the same
with the Panama Papers. There was a man named Richard Gaffney.
He was He lived in Massachusetts. He was an accountant.
(29:39):
He was apprehended in two thousand eighteen in December. That
was the first The first arrest occurred from the Panama
Papers in the US in December. Uh. I mean there
have been there again, there have been a handful of
people who have gotten in various levels of trouble throughout
the world because of the Panama Paper, as some politicians
(30:01):
have stepped down at least in part due to the
Panama Papers coming out, or at least UM had to apologize.
I remember when David Cameron had this whole story. It
was the same thing with you know, this is my
family's money and it's just in a trust and we're
just moving it around Vegas. Baby. Yeah, there we go.
(30:22):
That's what that was what Cameron said, it's mostly his
black check money. Yeah. Well, but but the United States
is different from in Malta. Um, it's different from New Zealand.
It's different from in Panama where it's actually occurring. Um.
And in Malta there is a clear issue. Yes, we'll
(30:42):
put it simply. The people who are in charge of
investigating this murder are the people that Galizia was investigating
when she was alive, or they're closely affiliated with the
people that she accused of cover ups crime and even
thinks range into support a violent crime. It's like a
(31:02):
waterfall of paychecks. Basically, who signs your paycheck well and
goes all the way up, oh exact, turtles all the
way down. Yeah, and their terror all the way down. Perhaps,
and you can't blame people for saying there's something screwery
with his investigation. One I think when the Prime Minister
(31:23):
continued to pursue a libel case against against Galicia after
she was dead and said he would drop it if
everyone agreed that he that he's cool and he didn't
do anything right. Uh. And I'm laughing with a bitter
note here, because you see, at this point it's widely
(31:48):
agreed that these three men who are currently in custody
for this crime. Uh, it's widely agreed that they were
not the brains behind the operation. They are all they're
all slightly older, low level criminals, most mostly known for
(32:10):
their activity in the diesel smuggling business, which is a
big business at Malta. So who is at the top,
you know, someone who would be we were looking then
in that case, we're looking for someone who fits a
couple of descriptions or a couple of profiles. We're looking
for someone who has enough money or enough you know,
(32:36):
financial clout such that they would be a subject of
something in the Panama papers. They have to be shell
company rich, right, Probably not an elected official. It might
be a one step removed from elected officials. Sure, yeah,
it might be somebody who bought a passport, who knows
and travels internationally. But there's somehow involved in Altese business,
(33:01):
because otherwise Alicia wouldn't have run up against them, you
know what. A right, So it's someone who is probably
on international sphere, maybe in politics, but definitely closely related
to someone in politics. Let's say they at the very
least have an interest in Maltese governance, right, there were
some regulations, and they're not the type of person to
(33:25):
go out and rig a car bomb themselves. They probably
are quite possibly not to be unfair to this horrific
excuse for a person, but they probably don't know how
to rig a car bomb. I I would agree with that.
So the investigation and the cover up continues. We mentioned
(33:49):
earlier these three criminals had said their rights were violated.
As of February when we're recording this, it seems that
the trial may finally begin. That's right, begin, Yeah, and
and it's so it's good right that was seen when
they argued that their rights are being violated. Now, two
(34:12):
years later later, the investigations going on, the police are
actually trying to find more suspects connected with the murder,
so trying to go up that chain to see who
actually ordered it. And this includes people who are suspected
to be linked with the commissioning. That's, like we said,
the not the putting together the bomb, but the commissioning
of the bomb. And uh. Foreign investigators have questioned the
(34:36):
reluctance of the multest police to kind of keep that
keep this trial going and make it happen um. And
they've also questioned the reluctance of them to proceed against
more suspects because that's where it could get really tricky
for for the police themselves. That's where you get a
little True Detective season one, right, following up the chain,
(34:57):
up the food chain of crime. Yeah, it's believed that
there may be between three and five other people who
have who are known to the police, are known to
law enforcement, but have not been publicly revealed. The argument
being that they're not slowing up the investigation on purpose,
they just need to gather more evidence at this point
(35:19):
against controversial thing. A lot of people don't believe the story.
A lot of European news outlets still follow the investigation
and the trial. There's an Italian daily paper called lah
Republica and it's been following a um. It's been barking
(35:41):
up a specific theory tree that may be of interest
to people who are familiar with this case or just
learning about it. The suspects in the murder, the diesel
fuel smugglers. It seems a very strange and specific type
of crime. They apparently, according to this paper, have a
(36:02):
connection with someone called Christian Cardona, Malta's current Minister of
Economics Economy Minister. In the weeks leading up to Galicia's assassination,
this guy, Christian Cardona, was spotted in a remote bar
on Malta twice with one of the guys who was
(36:24):
later charged with detonating the car bomb. Cardona responded calling
this report baseless, conjecture and outright fabrication. Officially, Kurt Ferrugia,
spokesperson for the Maltese government, stated, the government is confident
that anyone else responsible will be found and brought to justice.
(36:45):
We continue to support all efforts by the police and
investigating magistrate to find the truth. Malta is committed to
upholding human rights, freedom of speech, the protection of journalists,
and the rule of law. Well, who doesn't agree it
sounds like great pr um, but you know Galizia's family
(37:05):
does not agree with this, I think fairly obviously. And
we know this because Matthew, her son uh was quoted
in The Atlantic who By the way, Matthew is a
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Pretty awesome. Apple did not fall
far from the tree there um. But he, Matthew and
his two brothers have been lobbying European lawmakers and like
(37:28):
all these international organizations, four months and months and months
trying to call attention to problems within the investigation itself.
So let's let's look at that quote. Matthew said, my
mother was assassinated for reporting on corruption in Malta. And
he also sent out a tweet on the anniversary of
her death. He said, the people who did it are
(37:49):
still free. They sit in parliament and on private jets.
It's this simple. Wow. Yeah, it's it's heavy hitting. The
investigation continue us, as does on some level the cover up. Absolutely.
Some people are a little more optimistic than others and
(38:10):
think that ultimately the brains behind the operation will be
named were brought to justice. But for many other people, unfortunately,
this is just another day in Malta. I know, not
to sound Chinatown about it. Well, and it's also another
(38:32):
day in the upper echelons of power and influence. That's true,
That is absolutely true. At this point, that's where the
story ends. For now. It continues, and hopefully one day
we can come back with an update showing that justice
was served. But for now, we want to hear from you.
Why do you think these financial crimes and and these
(38:56):
sorts of assassinations come and go so quickly in the news.
Why do you think there's not more following up on
the Panama papers here in the United States? Yeah? Please,
we we want to know those things. Do you think
it has something to do with the connection or maybe
a crossroad somewhere between politics and organized crime. We'd like
(39:21):
to hear from you. If you know anything, be very
careful about writing to us, but we would love to
hear it. Um. You know, if not, send it to
a journalist somewhere within your country, just do it carefully. Um.
If you want to find us on social media and
connect with us that way, we are at conspiracy stuff
(39:42):
in most places, at conspiracy stuff show on Instagram, then
you have a personal Instagram. That's true, it is at
Ben Bowlen in a burst of unbridled creativity at Ben
Bowlen h s W. No, it's at Ben Bowlen. Oh
that's awesome. I am not I have one, but you
will never find it right right, it's it's enormously difficult
(40:07):
to locate. You don't want to see it. It's just
pictures of my son and I. And if you don't
want to connect with us that way, you can find
our Facebook group. Yes, here's where it gets crazy, where
you can hang out with our favorite part of the show,
your fellow listeners. You. It's also a great spot to
pitch us and ideas for future topics, or to get
some feedback from other people about a weird thing you
(40:29):
saw in the news, because it's cool to crowdsource. That's
that kind of fact checking, you know what I mean.
And we have the greatest mods on the planet, and
we have some top notch mods. That's their MATTERI is
beyond compare. And let's say you're someone who says, yeah,
I've I've got something you need to know. I want
to tell you, but I'm more of an audio person. Well,
(40:52):
we have good news for you. You can call us directly.
We are one eight three s t d W y
t K. That's right, it's not that creepy. It's just
an acronym for stuff they don't want you to know,
and it becomes numbers. When you type it in your phone,
you'll see okay, so leave us a message there. We
will listen to it and it might get on the
(41:13):
show if you make it weird enough. It's like, make
it super weird. You're opening the door my friend s
creative with, is what I'm saying. Yeah, if none and
if none of that, fight bags your badgers, have no fear.
We are still squarely in the world of email. You
can write to us directly. We are conspiracy at how
stuff works dot com.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.