With Joseph Muscat no longer Malta’s Prime Minister, cabinet ministers have come forward anonymously to say they are starting to believe the Egrant allegations so vehemently denied by the previous administration.

“I am starting to believe some of the allegations about Egrant… the ones we rebutted so vehemently in public,” one minister told Malta Today.

Egrant is the mysterious third company linked to the Panama Papers scandal, long believed to be connected to Muscat. An inquiry had rejected allegations that it was owned by Muscat’s wife. However, with his closest allies, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, holding the other two, the claims have never to gone away.

The same report also said that two other senior cabinet members agreed with the sentiment, while others threw their former leader under the bus, insisting Muscat was blind to Keith Schembri’s “treason”.

Muscat was forced to resign in disgrace, despite the fanfare, after his office and chief of staff, Keith Schembri, were linked to the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

His close relationship with Yorgen Fenech, the Tumas Group businessman charged in connection to the murder, has also been laid bare. Lovin Malta has revealed that Muscat received expensive gifts from Fenech and even invited him to his exclusive birthday party despite knowing he was a suspect.

Several Ministers claimed that Fenech was a regular fixture at Schembri’s Castille office, insisting that it was “well-known he was close to him”.

This runs contrary to official logs, which say Fenech visited Castille at least 26 times over the last six years.

The anonymous Ministers told Malta Today that they believed Muscat should have stepped down immediately last November, following Schembri’s arrest.

However, they gave their public support to the former Prime Minister throughout the political crisis, even backing him in a unanimous vote of confidence and giving him carte-blanche to resign on a date of his choosing.

The tear-filled adulation of Muscat by the cabinet and parliamentary group following his farewell speech also raises questions. The anonymous Ministers insisted that they “were not enthusiastic about the whole show and the hugging. Most of us felt used and deceived.”

The report claims that a recent Dubai visit by Muscat during the political crisis was also noted by the cabinet members, who said that “it was reckless, it was arrogant, and sent the wrong message”.

“It did not look like the Joseph we knew,” they said.

Muscat is staying on as an MP and is set to take a role at the Malta Football Association. However, all eyes are now on his replacement, Prime Minister Robert Abela, who is expected to address the issues within the first few months of his tenure.