Yorgen Fenech

Yorgen Fenech (born 23 November 1981) is a Maltese businessman whose main interests are casinos and hotels in Malta. He was head of the Tumas Group and director of the Maltese-Azerbaijan-German company ElectroGas Malta. Suspected of bribing members of the Maltese government, in November 2019 Fenech was arrested as a suspect in the murder of the investigative-journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. He is a key figure in the 2019 Malta political crisis and 2019 protests in Malta. Business Fenech is a prominent Maltese businessman. He was identified in 2018 as being the owner of the Dubai-registered company 17 Black. The company was listed in the Panama Papers and investigative journalist Caruana Galizia had written about 17 Black eight months before her death, alleging the company had links to Joseph Muscat's chief of staff Keith Schembri and to former energy minister Konrad Mizzi. Later, the research group The Daphne Project came across e-mails between 17 Black and two shell companies in Panama, belonging to Mizzi or Schembri. The emails mentioned payments of up to $2 million for unspecified services. Mizzi was then Minister of Energy in Malta, Schembri Chief of Staff of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Fenech was CEO of the Tumas Group and a director of energy company ElectroGas Malta; in 2019 he resigned from both positions. On 25 November 2019 Tumas Group said that allegations linking Fenech to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia were "alien to the Tumas Group's values".