An email sent by Turkish billionaire Robert Yildirim to Daphne Caruana Galizia murder suspect Yorgen Fenech in January 2019 has been presented to the Permanent Commission Against Corruption by Nationalist MP Karol Aquilina.

The email had been mentioned by Times of Malta in stories about evidence of potential corruption in a €40 million Marsa Junction flyover contract.

Ayhanlar, a Turkish contractor, won the 2018 tender to build the flyover, fending off competition from a consortium of Maltese bidders, among others. 

Times of Malta revealed that Fenech had been promised a €2 million "success fee" if Ayhanlar got the contract. But within weeks of winning the tender, Ayhanlar was crippled by financial trouble and the government brought in Yildirim to take the project over from them. 

The email from Robert Yuksel and Yorgen Fenech handed to Malta's anti-bribery commission.

Data on Fenech’s phone, which is now in the hands of police investigators, revealed his background as a middleman in the Marsa contract and also showed how he intended to funnel half the €2 million "success fee" to a secret offshore company linked to 17 Black - the offshore firm which Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi had said would be sending money to their own offshore firms. 

In the email exchange presented to the anti-corruption commission by the PN, Yildirim, whose global group runs the Malta Freeport Terminals, insinuated that Fenech may have been “bribing” to ensure Ayhanlar got the deal.

“What will you tell the court? Bribing someone but no payment,” Yildirim said in response to Fenech’s threats to sue him for failing to pay the success fees.

Yildirim told Times of Malta that he was just "testing" Fenech, to see if the €2 million success fees were linked to bribery.

In a statement on Wednesday, PN MP Aquilina said he presented the email to the commission while giving evidence in its investigation on the Marsa flyovers scandal, an investigation requested by the Nationalist Party.

Aquilina said the Nationalist Party encouraged all those who had further information to pass this on to the commission.