The story of Martin Cachia, a fisherman connected to the smuggling world, and victim of the car-bomb vendettas
Cachia was a fisherman who like many of his Maltese counterparts works on the margins of a Wild-West-On-Sea... a waterworld of smuggling, contraband, poaching, industrialised ranching
The story of Martin Cachia, killed in 2016 at the age of 56 with a car-bomb some sources once though he might have been transporting himself (although there is no substantial evidence of that) has fascinated me for two very specific reasons.
The first is that Cachia was a fisherman, and fishermen in Malta, by dint of their transportation and geographical location around Malta, live and work on the margins of a Wild-West-On-Sea... a waterworld of smuggling, contraband, poaching, industrialised ranching, as well as being powerless operators in the shadows of military forces (you can read this story on how oil smugglers were believed to have been tasked to refuel the Russian warship Kuznetsov, which is also given additional detail in Mark Camilleri’s Rentseeker’s Paradise).
The second is that Cachia features in a film short on fishing by the director Peter Sant, which you can watch here – and you listen to Cachia complaining about the new rules and restrictions on small fishermen, that prevent them from doing fishing the ‘old way’... a kind of new order that forced many small operators to try their hand at some illegal profiteering. It’s a great piece of cortometraggio by the way, and I find myself revisiting this short many a time.
Cachia’s death
Cachia was killed in 2016 as a result of the blast, with the explosives were placed at the back, at Triq il-Latmija on Marsascala’s bypass. Cachia had been investigated over drug trafficking, human smuggling and contraband cigarettes and was part of a probe into the smuggling of fuel from Libya. Because of his pending human trafficking case, Cachia also had to sign the bail book every day.
He also faced a pending court case over the trafficking of 20 persons.
Assistant Commissioner Silvio Valletta told the press at a crime conference that police were not ruling anything out, but they could not conclusively say the death was a homicide due to the dynamics of the explosion. “What we have to establish is how the explosives got inside the car,” he said.
A gaping hole was evident on the car’s floor, surrounding the driver’s area. This indicates that the explosive device was most likely inside the car when it went off. An eyewitness recounted how, upon hearing the sound of an explosion, he rushed outside where he saw the red Alfa in flames. The eyewitness said a friend of his, who owns a water bowser, happened to pass by at the time of the incident. The fire was put out and the persons realised that a “burnt man was lying on the seat”.
His wife calls for justice
This story by Nicole Meilak from October 2022 is a great interview with Cachia’s wife. Nobody has been charged with his murder and his wife, Elena Cachia, has been unable to get any answers from the police. Elena married her husband in 2013 after dating him for nine years. As they got married, Martin appointed her director to all of his companies to avoid any inheritance issues down the line. After he was killed, Elena was left battling several court cases to try and reclaim her husband’s companies and put the business back in action.
Fuel smuggling and other crimes
Cachia’s license allowed him to sail into international waters. According to Elena, her husband would sail out into the middle of the sea between Libya and Malta. Fuel would be loaded onto Cachia’s vessel, and another boat would come and pick up the load.
Cachia was already known to police as a fuel smuggler. He was a person of interest in a police probe into the smuggling of fuel from Libya.
He also faced human trafficking charges after his fishing vessel, the Liberty V, was impounded by police officers when they received a tip-off that 20 irregular immigrants were on board.
Liberty Fishing Company, which owned the Liberty V, was indeed owned by Elena, who was written down as the director, legal and judicial representative, and company secretary.
When he was arrested in 2013, Martin Cachia had refused to answer any questions during his interrogation over the human trafficking allegations. But his Egyptian crew soon changed their story. From rescuing sailors in distress, the crew recounted how the Liberty V had encountered problems with the vessel’s bilge pump.
They had contacted Cachia, who at first instructed them to return to shore, but shortly afterwards called up a crew member and told him to stand fast and await another vessel that was sailing to their location to pick up their cargo of around 70 boxes of Russian vodka.
After the two vessels got alongside each other, and before transferring the alcohol, the Liberty crew said that between 28 and 42 passengers embarked on their vessel from the other boat. The other boat had a Libyan crew.
The passengers included around five women and four or five children, who they said were “probably Syrian.” The Liberty reached land at Ras Ħanżir, beneath Corradino Hill in the Grand Harbour and had successfully offloaded part of its human cargo into a van before drugs squad police arrived on the scene. The officers were told by the crew that around 20 people remained on board the vessel.