A bus shelter company has filed police report after at least eight were vandalised during the night with posters of former deputy police commissioner Silvio Valletta and the alleged mastermind in the Caruana Galizia assassination, Yorgen Fenech, holding a child’s hand.
The posters read: “Uncle Keith, Uncle Silvio… any more?, with Mr Fenech replying: “Many more”.
The image is that depicted in a story last week when The Sunday Times of Malta revealed that Mr Valletta travelled abroad with Mr Fenech when the business magnate had already been identified as a person of interest in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation.
On September 29, 2018, Mr Valletta, who had been part of the team of investigators working on the Caruana Galizia case, travelled to London with the business tycoon to watch a football match at Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge stadium. He also travelled to Kiev in Ukraine to watch the Champions League Final in 2018.
The two caught an early morning Air Malta flight to Heathrow and sat together in business class. A witness said that during the flight, Mr Fenech was heard telling his children to “hold uncle Silvio’s hand”.
It was this that inspired the creator of this poster, with the two men holding the child’s hands and with the words Uncle Silvio and Uncle Keith, ostensibly referring to former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri. Mr Fenech is the owner of offshore company 17 Black and is also facing criminal proceedings over his involvement in the journalist's murder.
Mr Valletta insisted that at this point he had only known that there was an issue between middleman Melvin Theuma and Mr Fenech – not that Mr Fenech was a murder suspect. Despite the denials, his wife, Justyne Caruana, who had only been reappointed as Gozo Minister five days earlier, was forced to step down from her position. She remained a Labour MP.
The chief executive officer of the bus shelters’ company Faces, Matthew Farrugia said the company had so far identified eight of its bus shelters that had been forced open during the night, the original adverts removed and the new posters placed instead.
“So far we’ve found eight in San Ġwann, St Julian’s and Sliema that were forced open and had their adverts replaced.
According to company policy, we do not accept adverts of a political nature. Our teams are out there checking all our bus shelters and we are filing police reports on each one we find vandalised,” Mr Farrugia told Times of Malta when contacted.
Civil society group Repubblika said when contacted that it was not behind the posters.