Leaked e-mails show Konrad Mizzi’s financial advisers referred to his past waste management expertise when speaking about plans for his Panama company to extract profits from waste recycling.
This newspaper reported yesterday Dr Mizzi, the Minister Within the Office of the Prime Minister, told the Pana Committee on Monday e-mails about business plans for his Panama company must have been wrongly attributed to him by Nexia BT.
He told MEPs his financial advisers must have wrongly attributed to him things that were attributable to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri.
An e-mail sent by Nexia BT to Mossack Fonseca with details on “future business plans” were directly above a biography about the minister. It lists all of Dr Mizzi’s degrees and his professional work experience prior to becoming a minister.
The biography states that the owner of the Panama company “has led the development and commissioning of various infrastructure, waste management, telecommunications and energy projects”.
“He has extensive expertise in waste management trading and waste management services,” the biography sent by Nexia BT says.
He has extensive expertise in waste management trading and waste management services
“The UBO [ultimate beneficial owner] also established and implemented the business model for the management of low level radioactive waste which included the expansion of a repository in Drigg (Cumbria) and the development of new waste routes. He led the development and commercial provision of profitable new waste-related services.
“He also set up various new operations across the energy sector (such as construction shared services), infrastructure (e.g. roads landscaping) and housing (in the UK),” according to the biography.
Prior to returning to Malta, Dr Mizzi spent several years working in the UK.
Directly below the biography sent by Nexia BT, the e-mail says future business plans for underlying entities of the trust included trading of plastic, paper and aluminium recycling.
Nexia BT said that most of the material for the operation would be collected, processed and compacted in Europe and then sold in India and China.
The future business plans also speak of trade in used tyres collected throughout Europe and North Africa and shredded and then resold to tarmac plants across Southern Europe and North Africa.
The Nexia BT e-mail says that the intended activities all fell within the areas of expertise of the owner of the Panama company and were developed before his appointment.
In the final lines of the e-mail, Nexia BT responds to queries on the appointment of Sai Mizzi as special envoy to China.
An attachment in the e-mail includes a copy of Ms Mizzi’s appointment details.
The Panama Papers show that Mossack Fonseca forwarded the Nexia BT e-mail to Bentley Chartered Accountants in New Zealand to provide “additional information” on Dr Mizzi.
The data was made available to the Times of Malta through a partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
jacob.borg@timesofmalta.com