As the police continue to search for a motive behind Thursday’s coldblooded murder of lawyer Carmel Chircop, and with most theories suggesting a financial motive behind the brutal slaying, investigators face hundreds of potential leads through Dr Chircop’s extensive business network alone.

This newspaper has determined that Dr Chircop held a total of 157 different positions – from director to shareholder and from company secretary to legal representative – across 117 different companies.  This presents a formidable amount of work for investigators, who will no doubt be looking into every nook and cranny of Dr Chircop’s professional life as they attempt to establish a motive.

Dr Chircop is in fact listed as a director of 14 companies, a shareholder in 18, the company secretary of 94, the legal or judicial representative of 29 and the liquidator of two companies.

As a commercial maritime lawyer, many of these companies are held in trust and appear to relate to normal run-of-the-mill company registration work.  Many of the companies are also clearly involved in the shipping industry.

But what will undoubtedly complicate police investigations further is the fact that of the companies in which Dr Chircop was a director or shareholder, his partners hailed from at least 12 different countries: Panama, Cyprus, Greece, Luxemburg, Poland, Madagascar, Portugal, Virgin Islands, Russia, Germany, Belgium and Venezuela.

Some of his positions in these companies are, however, of interest. For example, in July 2013 he was appointed as a director, company secretary, legal representative and judicial representative at Malta Government Investments Limited when the government holding company’s board was replaced by the new government.

Dr Chircop was also a minority shareholder in Exodus Global Group Holdings Limited, where he held a token one share, with the rest held by Keith Robert Sampson Bristol. Exodus and Mr Sampson Bristol had attempted, unsuccessfully, to sue this newspaper in 2010 over its reportage on a scam the company had been implicated in, in which American investors had been defrauded to the tune of some $20 million.

Fifty-one-year-old Dr Chircop, from Birkirkara, was shot dead in his garage on Thursday morning, gunned down by an unknown assailant in a multi-storey garage in John Borg Street, where his car was parked, at 7.30am.

An autopsy has shown that Dr Chircop was shot four times in the upper body, and forensic tests are being carried out to determine the type of weapon that was used.

Although the police have said Dr Chircop had received death threats in the past, the motive behind the murder is still unclear as the police continue to investigate the lawyer’s professional work and personal life including financial transactions. At this stage the police are ruling nothing out.

Police officers were at the lawyer’s office in Valletta on Thursday evening to look into Dr Chircop’s work and they are checking the lawyer’s phone records in an attempt to find a lead.

The police believe the killer left the scene of the crime in a light-coloured small car, which was seen on CCTV cameras minutes after the murder. The police also mounted a search at Malta International Airport in case the killer was looking to leave the country after committing the crime.