The 53-year old mother of three who led the Panama papers revelations and whose blog posts regularly had more readers than the combined circulation of the country's newspapers, Daphne Caruana Galizia, had been commonly described as a "one-woman WikiLeaks" for being "a thorn in the side of both the establishment and underworld figures" in the EU's smallest member state.

And now her case and prior prolific reporting has brought down Malta's prime minister and top officials within his cabinet, as the AFP reports "Joseph Muscat will step down on January 18, party sources told AFP Saturday, following mounting criticism of his response to the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia."