A bomb silenced Daphne Caruana Galizia. But her investigation lives on

The explosion was so loud it shook the windows of the family home.

In a cold panic, Matthew Caruana Galizia ran to the front door, barefoot. “That moment, opening the door, the dogs barking, the light, I just thought I was going to collapse on to the floor.”

The neighbours were already outside. He sprinted past them, down the dirt track that leads to the village road, barely aware of the stones cutting into the soles of his feet. Halfway down he saw the column of black smoke.

In front of him were the remains of a burning car, his mother’s. She had been inside it.

The murder six months ago of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia sent shockwaves around the world.

In Malta, the prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and his party stand accused of allowing corruption to go unpunished, of weakening the police and the judiciary, of allowing an environment in which her killing became possible.

But it goes deeper than that. The European Union must now decide how to deal with its smallest member state – an island that appears to have become a magnet for criminals and kleptocrats, and that some MEPs fear has become a gateway for dirty money into the rest of the continent, including the UK.

The profound questions raised by Caruana Galizia’s murder have become the focus of a new collaboration: the Daphne Project.

With the support of her family, a group of 18 international media organisations, including the Guardian, Reuters and Le Monde, has come together. Led by , whose mission is to continue the work of silenced journalists, the group has spent