Stonewalled For The Fourth Time: Status on Tax Investigation Into Mizzi And Schembri Remains Concealed
The Maltese Tax Commissioner is refusing to provide an update into an investigation he had launched into whether tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri had used their offshore Panama companies to evade or avoid tax.
When the Panama Papers scandal broke in early 2016, Mizzi and Schembri subjected themselves to an audit by the Commissioner for Inland Revenue, with Mizzi pledging to repeat this audit process every year.
“I am going to be the first MP to submit myself annually to an audit from the Commissioner for Inland Revenue,” Mizzi had said in an interview wth MaltaToday. “I am subjecting myself to the highest level of scrutiny.”
However, two years down the line and the public is still none the wiser about these investigations. All that has been published so far are separate audits by major audit firm Crowe Horwath, which found that Mizzi’s and Schembri’s Panama companies never traded or held bank accounts.
During last year’s election campaign, the Commissioner for Inland Revenue and the Tax Compliance Unit were forced to deny a report that the tax audits had closed and re-opened in light of a story by now-assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia that their companies had set up accounts at Pilatus Bank to receive kickbacks.
And last June, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat confirmed the investigations were still ongoing and said “you will be able to find out the outcome of them if you ask questions”.
So ask questions we did.
Lovin Malta first sent questions to the Office of the Prime Minister requesting basic details about these investigations, but we never received a response.
Two weeks ago, we asked the same questions to Konrad Mizzi at a press conference but were stonewalled again, with Mizzi merely stating he hadn’t avoided any tax and had conducted himself to an audit.
We then went back to the Prime Minister to ask whether there has been an update since 2016, but he answered that he isn’t privy to the investigations and referred us to the Commissioner for Inland Revenue Marvin Gaerty.
So we sent a range of questions to the IRD, including whether the investigations had concluded and whether any action had been taken against Mizzi and Schembri. For good measure, we also asked for details about Opposition leader Adrian Delia’s tax arrears and whether the IRD has any open investigations or actions with regard to other Maltese politicians.
The response was as follows: “With respect to your questions in your email below, kindly note that we are bound by secrecy and confidentially as regards taxpayer information and therefore cannot divulge ANY information whatsoever.”
We have now sent questions to Mizzi and Schembri, asking whether the investigations have been concluded and, if so, what their outcomes were.
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