[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Stephen Calleja\/AP<\/p>\n
Daphne Caruana Galizia had exposed the island nation\u2019s links to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers<\/em><\/p>\n A Maltese investigative journalist who exposed the island nation\u2019s links to offshore tax havens through the leaked Panama Papers was killed when a bomb exploded in her car,\u00a0on Monday<\/span>.<\/p>\n Daphne Caruana Galizia, 53, had just driven away from her home in Mosta, a large town on Malta\u2019s main island, when the bomb went off, sending the vehicle’s wreckage spiraling over a wall and into a field, Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.<\/p>\n Caruana Galizia\u2019s death resulted from a \u201cbarbaric attack\u201d that also amounted to an assault on freedom of expression, Muscat said. He described her as \u201cone of my harshest critics, on a political and personal level\u201d as he denounced her slaying.<\/p>\n One of the topics the veteran reporter examined was what the documents from the 2016 leak said about Malta. She wrote that Muscat\u2019s wife, the country\u2019s energy minister and the government\u2019s chief-of-staff had offshore holdings in Panama to receive money from Azerbaijan.<\/p>\n Muscat and his wife, Michelle, denied they had companies in Panama.<\/p>\n Caruana Galizia filed a police report two weeks ago saying she was receiving threats, law enforcement officials told Malta news outlets\u00a0on Monday<\/span>.<\/p>\n The slain journalist had been a regular columnist for The Malta Independent, writing twice weekly for the newspaper since 1996. She also wrote a blog called \u201cRunning Commentary,\u201d which was followed by in Malta.<\/p>\n A half hour before she was killed, she posted to her web site an item about a libel claim the prime minister\u2019s chief of staff had brought against a former opposition over comments the latter made about corruption.<\/p>\n Caruana Galizia herself had been sued for libel over articles she wrote for her blog. Opposition leader Adrian Delia sued her over a series of stories linking him to a prostitution racket in London. Economy Minister Chris Cardona claimed libel when she wrote that he visited a brothel while in Germany<\/strong><\/a> on government business.<\/p>\n Monday<\/span>\u00a0evening\u2019s Parliament session was scrapped, except for briefings about the bombing given by Muscat and Delia, who called the reporter\u2019s slaying a \u201cpolitical murder\u201d.<\/p>\n Muscat said he has asked the U.S. government and the FBI for help investigating the car bombing.<\/p>\n