Those selling Malta for sunny Mediterranean holidays or incentive travel this season have a new challenge after a journalist who made accusations of corruption against Malta’s PM, Joseph Muscat, was murdered there in October.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, who alleged endemic corruption in Malta’s government was killed by a car bomb that blew her to bits on October 16. She had just filed her latest article attacking the government there which finished with “There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate”.

Other UK journalists have opined that Malta “looks increasingly like a gangster state: A haven for dirty money run by dodgy politicians, a corrupt judiciary and a partisan police force” with the rule of law “being systematically undermined”.