Grenades, pistols and poison: Yorgen Fenech's dark web purchases listed in court

Updated 12.28pm

Yorgen Fenech bought grenades, poison, machine guns, pistols and around 800 bullets more than one year after Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered, a court heard on Wednesday.

The business mogul, who will face trial for complicity in the journalist’s 2017 murder, made the weapons purchases on the dark web and paid for them using cryptocurrency Bitcoin, deputy attorney general Philip Galea Farrugia said.

Galea Farrugia said Fenech had bought “two grenades, two Glock pistols, two machine guns, Scorpions and some 800 bullets,” along with silencers for the pistols.

In another, separate purchase, Fenech had received an email assuring him that a 20-gram shipment of potassium cyanide – a chemical that releases a highly toxic gas – had been shipped to him that morning, Galea Farrugia said.

The purchases were made in November 2018 – the same month that Times of Malta and Reuters revealed that Fenech was the owner of secret offshore company 17 Black.

Caruana Galizia was the first person to reveal the existence of 17 Black, which a leaked email has revealed was named as the source of funds for offshore companies belonging to former minister Konrad Mizzi and former OPM chief...