Every year we ask Times of Malta journalists to share the story they worked on in the last 12 months that left an impact on them and why. Here are their choices for 2023. 

Invitation to anarchy

JACOB BORG

Documentary evidence is the gold standard for any article.

I realised I had hit such a goldmine as soon as I started delving into thousands of WhatsApp messages exchanged between a Transport Malta employee and top government officials.

The chats made me angry.

They detailed how ex-Transport Minister Ian Borg, ministry officials and even the prime minister’s assistant “helped” Labour-leaning voters get an easy ride during their driving tests.

There was apparently little regard to the dangers of short-circuiting a system designed to keep potentially unsafe drivers off the road. 

Prime Minister Robert Abela even had the gall to dismiss the practice of “helping” voters in such a manner as a normal part of Malta’s political system.

Employers slammed Abela’s suggestion as an “invitation to anarchy”.

Insurers urged the authorities to force all those who benefitted from the racket to retake their driving test. Doctors echoed their demand.

The Opposition called the government endorsed system a “licence to kill”.

The police were conspicuously silent. There was not much they could say, having sat on the same evidence I had obtained for over a year.

To date, only three Transport Malta officials have been charged with trading in influence.

Top government officials who passed on the names of candidates to the Transport Malta employees have escaped any consequences.

These include Borg, the prime minister’ assistant Rachel Debono, the Gozo Minister’s chief of staff Michael Buhagiar and former OPM official Ray Mizzi, who now works as a customer care official in minister Michael Falzon’s secretariat.

The invitation to anarchy continues.

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Is this the real life?

NEVILLE BORG

“I don’t have any photos of my son,” Christine sighed sadly on the other end of the line. “They took everything”.

Christine was describing how scammers locked her out of her Facebook, Instagram and Google accounts, where she meticulously documented her son’s childhood through photos, and convinced her to record a blackmail-style video in the desperate hope of getting them back.

Christine was just one of countless victims of a crypto investment scam that spread like wildfire over the summer. Some lost money, others lost access to their social media accounts, often having to rebuild their business accounts from scratch. Shockingly, some even had to watch in horror as a deepfake likeness of themselves promoting the scam was shared online.

I spoke to several people who fell victim to the scam. Many of them were cagey, either embarrassed at having been scammed in the first place or angry that a stranger was asking them to relive the experience.

Christine was guarded. Once bitten, twice shy.

“How do I know you are who you say you are?”, was the first thing she asked. A fair question, given the circumstances.

Several reassuring emails and messages later, with my identity finally verified, Christine opened up, showing me copies of the long chats between herself and the scammers.

The chats were shocking, the scammers moving seamlessly from false empathy and concern one minute, to cruel taunts and threats the next.

Meanwhile, there was Christine, desperately trying every trick in the book to get her accounts back, pleading with the scammers, threatening to involve the police and, eventually, giving up.

News about scams often goes under the radar. “That would never happen to me”, we sneer whenever we come across stories of scam victims, “I’d never fall for that”.

Perhaps we won’t. But, as scams become more sophisticated and harder to detect by the day, we all have something to learn from Christine’s story.

A murder in my hometown

GIULIA MAGRI

It’s 6.30am on January 18. Still half-asleep, I reach out for my mobile and start my usual routine of scrolling through social media to see if anything happened during the night.

That’s when I saw a post about a woman being killed after a car ran her over. The details were scarce, but looking at the photo I realised that this had happened next to a KFC restaurant that was less than a five-minute walk from my home.

The dawn sky was still a faint purple colour when I arrived there.

It was a disaster. Glass shards, broken rubble, and metal were scattered all around. A handful of police officers and bystanders crowded around the black BMW that had run over Pelin Kaya and crashed into the restaurant window. 

Shortly after publishing the story, sources and neighbours of the BMW driver, Jeremie Camilleri, reached out to me with information about him.

I recall one of Kaya’s colleagues telling me, over the phone, that she was the pedestrian victim killed just one hour into her 30^th birthday as she was walking home from a small birthday celebration at the time.

As the week progressed, Pelin Kaya’s murder and her story continued to make headlines. When I watched Kaya’s family lay her birthday cake  at the site of her death, the true weight of what had happened hit me.

The cake was covered in references to the 1990s sitcom Friends, including the lettering ‘the one where Pelin turns 30’ and the unnerving phrase “why God, why”.

Her sister, Derya, was on her knees, weeping as she sang Happy Birthday over her sister's cake.

I cannot describe the emotions that overcame me at that moment.

With the help of two Turkish journalists I had the opportunity to sit down with Pelin’s mother, Çiçek, who recalled how she could hear her daughter’s voice when she visited the site of her murder.

The cake is long gone and the flowers placed during that vigil have been replaced many times. Every time I walk past that area, I think of Pelin Kaya and hope her family will get some form of justice soon.

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The grinch who stole Christmas

DANIEL ELLUL

Christmas is a time when the best of humanity is on show. People look to spend time with their loved ones and donate to charitable causes.

When I stumbled on a story about workers at a Christmas Village going unpaid, I couldn't help but think of the irony.

JK Security Services Limited provided labour to the 2021 Ta’ Xbiex Christmas Village and promised their workers between €6 and €7 an hour.

But nine foreign nationals employed by the subcontracting company were left unpaid for hundreds of hours' worth of work.

"I didn't even get a single euro to survive, eat food or pay rent," one of them told me.

The workers only had a verbal agreement with the company, leaving them with nowhere to turn.

"We were not working legally, so what could we do? If I went to the authorities, I could have been deported," one said.

After we published the story, the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations said they were investigating the issue.

Many non-EU nationals are often unaware of Maltese laws, afraid to report abuse to authorities, and willing to accept illegal working conditions to survive.

I’ve spent much of 2023 writing about the exploitation of non-EU nationals and trying to expose the shifty employers who look to capitalise on their vulnerability. 

Unfortunately, the abuse of workers appears to be for life, not just for Christmas.

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Rebuilding a tragedy in court 

EDWINA BRINCAT

“He was the centre of my life,” Isabelle Bonnici cried at the opening session of the public inquiry into the tragic death of her 20-year-old son Jean Paul.

Her cry was echoed by John Sofia in the final stages of the inquiry: “My world has ended,” the victim’s father said, his voice cracking as he wrapped up his testimony.

All those following proceedings were left momentarily speechless.

Jean Paul Sofia was buried alive under the rubble of a Corradino factory that came crashing down like a stack of dominoes. It was another construction tragedy that shocked the nation.

Memories of court proceedings related to the tragic death of Miriam Pace – another civilian buried alive – were still fresh in my mind when I found myself sitting through 15 sessions of the Sofia public inquiry, starting in mid-August.

Through it all, I observed Jean Paul’s parents, united in grief but steadfast in their resolve to get answers about their son’s death, no matter how uncomfortable.

Their determination to kickstart a public inquiry, casting a spotlight on the construction industry, was an admirable feat. Taking the witness stand, must not have been easy. But Isabelle and John overcame any qualms and testified not only for the sake of their son but also to ensure that others would not go through a similar experience.

They battled the darkness that came down on them as they watched their son’s lifeless body being pulled out of the rubble, setting out on a quest for justice which brought hope that long-needed changes in the construction sector might finally materialise.

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Trapped in their own homes

FIONA GALEA DEBONO

2023 seems to have been characterised by stories of local communities struggling with disruption and chaos in their localities.

Once-tranquil residential areas have been facing the frustration of unruly construction, traffic, hygiene issues, noise pollution and out-of-place activity as they are commercialised, and in the case of The Strand in Sliema, transformed into a pumping nightlife mecca.

When I agreed to meet the inhabitants of this supposedly upmarket, seaview-apartment area, I saw a route I had often hurriedly taken in a completely different light.

As I walked through a dark, narrow tunnel to the beat of loud music, sandwiched tight between bars and restaurants and their extended outdoor seating areas, I could see how these had replaced much-needed parking spaces, while double and triple parking created obstacles on the busy main road.

They were also a hazard for residents in case of an emergency, with access, both along the pavement and into their homes, being hindered by the unbridled occupation of public land.

The group of residents were vociferous about their distress in the face of rising fumes from illegal eateries beneath, the wild behaviour of drunk and rowdy revellers, as well as the drowning out the relaxing sounds of the sea and all the reasons why they invested in these properties.

Trapped in their apartments, unable to use their terraces due to the din, stench and dangers from the chaos below, their protest was eventually met with a promise of enforcement action.

Months later, however, I still receive a barrage of e-mails from the residents on a wild-goose chase of a spate of authorities, highlighting the problems in the “lawless” entertainment hub.

I duly file these in a separate and ever-growing folder, as, together with other illegalities I have highlighted in the area, they continue to fester.

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When the ‘bad’ guys are also ‘good’ 

MARK LAURENCE ZAMMIT

People often expect us journalists to identify the good people from the bad people. They expect us to compartmentalise heroes and villains to make sense of this very complicated life.

The more I work in this profession, the more I realise real-life people are rarely heroes or villains. The disability benefits racket stood out to me as one of the boldest examples of that reality.

It wasn’t immediately clear to my colleague Jacob Borg and myself how big the racket was, until we began to untangle it and saw its magnitude unravel before us. Hundreds of people had defrauded taxpayers thousands of euros each, silently and comfortably pocketing an extra income every month without anyone ever batting an eyelid for years before the police got wind of it.

‘These are some bad people,’ you’d think to yourself in the face of overwhelming evidence.

It turned out most of them were also very sick and poor.

People often tell me, ‘Does that justify what they did?’ Of course not, but it humbles us into understanding that the issues are far more complex.

In all fairness, some cheats were neither poor nor sick. They walked into the racket knowing very well what they were doing.

But these people were also led to believe the powers that be were on their side, only to realise – when they found themselves before the police – that their own party and people were nowhere to be seen.

And that’s one other thing that really impacted me this year. Seeing these people thrown under the bus, seeing Jean Paul Sofia repeatedly shunned by the government he voted for...

It got me thinking. When you get into trouble and you think you have too many friends to rely on, no matter who you are, you’ll most likely be alone.

40 people in a flat 

JAMES CUMMINGS

Journalism can often feel frustrating, with the wheels of change moving slowly at best or all too often, remaining stationary. But not always.

In May, Times of Malta received a tip-off about an apartment in Sliema housing large numbers of workers. I went to take a look.

The situation that greeted me was alarming; around 40 foreign workers were paying up to €250 a month each, sleeping up to nine in a room with only three bathrooms and one kitchen between themselves.

Towels tied to bunk bed railings provided only limited privacy, while food packets, suitcases, clothes and pots and pans littered the floor. Some beds were just mattresses on the floor.

The conditions were cramped, unsanitary and unacceptable. We have a word for that: slum.

Just as shocking were the stories of the tenants. They wanted to leave but said they couldn’t because “most people don’t rent to an Indian or someone from Bangladesh”.

And with many of them working in the lowest-paid jobs, such as food couriers, their options were limited.

Meanwhile, their landlord – who we estimated could have been raking in around €8,000 per month in rent – seemed to be living it up, his profile photo on Facebook showing him enjoying a day out on a speedboat.

Readers were understandably shocked at the conditions inside the apartment.

Within hours of the story being published, police accompanied by officials from the health and housing departments swooped on the property.

I waited for changes to the law that would ensure such situations couldn’t re-occur. But nothing happened.

Then in December, proposed amendments to rent laws were announced. The changes mean landlords will no longer be able to register rental properties with more than six tenants who are not part of the same family.

While the problem will likely not disappear overnight, it is both heartening and encouraging to see that change can and sometimes does happen.

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A system that chews you up and spits you out 

JESSICA ARENA

Workplace accidents and injuries have become so commonplace that we are almost desensitised to any injury short of death reported.

One such person was Mekhi, a 22-year-old Sudanese man who lost his leg after he fell into a cement mixer. Although Mekhi’s story grabbed people’s attention at the time it was reported, most of us did not think much about what became of the young man after his ordeal.

That changed for me when, through the work of the YMCA, Mekhi went public with his story and revealed that he had ended up homeless as a direct result of the incident.

He was kept in an induced coma for three weeks and awoke to find his left leg amputated and his right severely mangled.

As he started his journey of recovery, Mekhi’s roommate decided to leave the country.

Unable to pay rent on his own, Mekhi ended up evicted and forced to sleep on the streets. He even contemplated suicide before he was able to find help.

Once is a tragedy, but multiple is a pattern of behaviour.

At the start of January 2023, there were 87 pending magisterial inquiries into workplace deaths and injuries.

Foreign workers tell us how they come to this country seeking better prospects in industries that are constantly asking for more personnel. Despite this, they end up exploited, forced to subsist on meagre wages and live in sub-optimal housing.

And finally, as Mekhi’s story illustrates, when they are injured on the job and are no longer of value to their employers, they are discarded.

The contrast between how we perceive ourselves as welcoming and charitable versus how we treat those we perceive as strangers must be reckoned with.

There is no us and them when it comes to basic human decency.

The stories that should keep us up at night

SARAH CARABOTT

Three years ago, Agnes Mudembo told me about her horrific ordeal in Malta.

Agnes was flown over as a housekeeper, leaving her three children behind in Zimbabwe. She was paid €250 a month to work seven days a week, had her passport confiscated, survived on her employer’s leftovers and banished from the house when she fell ill.

Once she was helped out of the cycle of abuse and exploitation, she wanted to give something back to the country.

Her resilience struck me as a journalist, and her story stuck with me as a mother.

We remained in touch as she juggled two jobs, saved enough to rent her own place, was reunited with her children, was granted refugee status and read for a Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of Malta.

But despite being given the go-ahead to settle in Malta, Agnes was not allowed to work within the public health sector.

As the world marked Refugee Week this year, we reported that health authorities had told Agnes she was ineligible to work for the government because as a non-EU national, she had not proven she was granted long-term resident status in Malta or that she was married to an EU national. Having a refugee status, they confirmed, did not make her eligible for the post.

Unfortunately, Agnes is not the only one in this position… she is just the only one brave enough to speak up.

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Opening up after the crime

CLAUDIA CALLEJA

When people experience a tragic, unjust loss, they are often reluctant to speak to us journalists. They think we are out to get them and lawyers advise them to stay away.

But more often than not, this sentiment changes, and they realise that the media may be the only answer to the inaction.

In 2023 I interviewed several people who spoke up, for the first time, years after an incident occurred. It is always a humbling privilege to be trusted with their sensitive stories.

The sisters of Sion Grech opened up – 18 years after Sion was murdered – about their devastation that no one was found guilty of the crime. They blamed the justice system for the outcome.

Desiree Grech Rosso felt the law that allowed her fathers’ alleged killers to “get away with murder” should change. Her father, Albert Brian Rosso, disappeared in 2005. The two men charged were cleared after statements in which they admitted to the murder were scrapped by the courts.

The son of Lino Cauchi, Paolo, described how his life was shaped by his father’s murder. Cauchi went missing on February 1982, when his wife was three months pregnant with Paolo. In 2023 the family was awarded €615,000 compensation for shortcomings in the investigations. The murder remained unsolved.

Catherine Degabriele appealed for someone to speak up a year after her husband, army sergeant Christian Degabriele, was killed when he was hit on the head by a boat’s propeller while diving.

The siblings of femicide victim Bernice Cassar spoke about how nobody from the state had apologised to them for the various shortcomings that left Bernice’s two children motherless. Days later, the prime minister apologised to them on the state’s behalf.

The thrill of the catch

DANIEL TIHN

In April, an article I wrote made me realise the impact of journalism.

A month and a half earlier, I learnt of four university students who had been arrested and strip-searched; at the time, it was described to me as “unjust” and “unlawful”.

“How so,” I asked.

These four students had found a security flaw in a local business’s software and had sent an email to the company informing them that people’s data was at risk. Email addresses, location data and Google calendars were all exposed.

In the email, they followed a global practice and asked the company for a bug bounty: prize money that many tech companies offer and reward white hat hackers for finding bugs, errors and flaws within their software.

Instead of receiving a reward, the students ended up being arrested under suspicion of unauthorised access.

After many interviews over the next month – where I had to scramble to learn the intricacies of data protection – and many drafts that did not quite cut it, the story finally came out.

“'We wanted to help': Students arrested after exposing FreeHour security flaw,” the headline read, with a photo of the four of them beneath it.

I remember my heart pounding. All that work was now there, condensed into a four-minute read. All I could do was hope people would read it.

That morning, when I walked into the office and in group chats, it felt like everyone was talking it.

It was one of the biggest thrills. And somewhere in that excitement, I discovered how influential our jobs can be.

The grief of a parent

MATTHEW XUEREB

No parent should have to bury their child.

Two stories that struck me in 2023 were both related to the quest of two mothers seeking justice for their children, who they had to bury prematurely.

I would not have wanted to be a hair on Isabelle Bonnici’s body when she learned that the architect responsible for the collapsed timber factory that killed her son, Jean-Paul Sofia, had blamed him for his own death.

And I also wouldn’t have wanted to be in Josephine Boni’s shoes when the court ruled that burying her young daughter in a plastic bag without the parents’ knowledge did not breach her rights or her daughter’s.

As a parent, I cannot fathom the hurt these mothers must have endured, still grieving the loss of their precious children.

It was a particularly difficult piece to pen that Adriana Zammit, who is facing criminal proceedings over Sofia’s involuntary homicide, claimed “contributory negligence” by Jean Paul Sofia since the victim should not have been on site at the time of the incident.

A magisterial inquiry into the incident found a litany of shortcomings that led to the building’s collapse.

In the Boni case, the ruling about the plastic bag burial case came hot on the heels of another judgment in April that exonerated a cement truck driver from all criminal responsibility for Johanna Boni’s death.

Boni, 27, was at a stop sign on her motorbike when she was run over on January 5, 2016. She was on her way to work when she was hit by a truck driver.

The driver was cleared of criminal negligence after the court ruled that a miscalculated manoeuvre by Boni when she tried to overtake the heavy vehicle had contributed to the fatal impact.

This perplexed her parents who wondered how the court could have reached such a conclusion.

The Attorney General appealed that verdict, arguing that the magistrate wrongly interpreted the evidence produced during the compilation of evidence.

We will see where that appeal leads. But it all makes me wonder what value we are giving to human lives.