Diplomatic relations between Malta and the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia encountered tension this week, after the German authorities announced the launch of an investigation into nearly 2,000 phantom companies in Malta, some with links to major German groups and under suspicion of fraud.
At the end of April, North Rhine-Westphalia was anonymously sent a CD of data including a list of 77,000 companies registered in Malta. “For a long time, there have been indications that there is a kind of Panama in Europe”, Norbert Walter-Borjans, the state's finance minister, said this week in Berlin.
“Since when has the whole Maltese company register of Maltese registered companies been foreign, offshore and German”, the Maltese finance minister, Edward Scicluna, tweeted. He stressed that as the register is public, “anybody can claim a copy of the register on a CD”. He added that the figure of 77,000 registered companies was the total number of companies established over several years, only 50,000 of which remain today. The other 27,000 companies, therefore, have been “dissolved or struck off”.
These revelations come as the Maltese are preparing to vote on 3 June, in elections called by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat against a backdrop of suspicions of the involvement of his wife and his head cabinet in the Panama Papers scandal (see EUROPE 11779).
Various political groups of the European Parliament wish to invite Muscat to explain himself before a plenary session and this request was tabled to the conference of the Presidents on Thursday 11 May. On the same day, the leader of the EPP group, Germany's Manfred Weber, accused the S&D group of wanting to “keep Maltese voters in the dark” and blocking the EPP's demand for a debate in plenary. The S&D said that the Prime Minister will come before the plenary in June, after the elections. The EPP hit back by pointing out that the Prime Minister would have to come in June in any case, as it will be the end of the Maltese Presidency of the Council. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)