An inquiry into high-level corruption claims made by the murdered Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has found no evidence that the Maltese prime minister's wife was involved in money-laundering.

Mrs Galizia, the island's most influential blogger, was killed in a car bomb attack last October, just six months after reporting that Joseph Muscat's wife Michelle had a secret bank account that was used for laundering cash for the ruling family of Azerbaijan.

The allegation - part of a string of stories she wrote alleging sleaze in Malta's government - prompted widespread speculation that she had been the victim of a state-backed assassination.

However, a lengthy inquiry by a Maltese magistrate has now ruled that there was no evidence to link either Ms Muscat or her husband to Egrant, a shell company first identified in the 2016 Panama papers scandal.

Mrs Galizia had alleged that Egrant was used to channel more than $1m (£761,000) from the family of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, a central Asian republic with a reputation for corruption and human rights abuses.