Claims by the MEPs investigating the Panama Papers scandal that the documents presented to a committee last week pointed to potential money laundering were “wrong”, Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister Konrad Mizzi insisted yesterday.

Asked about Pana committee chairman Werner Langen’s comments last week, the minister reiterated his previous claims that he had submitted his financial affairs to unprecedented scrutiny and dismissed the claims as wrong.

Following the Pana meeting in Malta last week, Mr Langen said that the documents on Dr Mizzi’s financial affairs which were given to the committee needed to be investigated further.

Dr Mizzi – who was stripped of the energy and health portfolios last year following the Panama Papers leak – was asked about the MEPs’ comments during a press conference in Brussels following a meeting of the Energy Council, which he chairs.

When asked why he had still not stepped down despite the recent comments by the committee chair, the minister again explained he had submitted himself “to the scrutiny of the Maltese parliament”, a statement he has been making since it was revealed last year that he had opened a secret company in an offshore jurisdiction.

The minister also referred to the motion of no confidence that was filed against him by the Opposition last year.

In a statement issued by the Office of the Prime Minister following the Pana Committee meeting last week, Dr Mizzi accused the committee members of making “politically charged statements” and implied that the hearings were not objective.

In the eight-page declaration, Dr Mizzi boasted of his achievements as energy minister and accused local media houses, including the Times of Malta, of taking part in a “wider, coordinated attack aimed at character assassination”,  which had been “orchestrated by the Nationalist Party”.

Dr Mizzi, the only serving minister within the EU to be named in the Panama Papers data leak released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last year, told the committee members that he was “the victim of fake news”.

Dr Mizzi stopped short of expressing contrition for having opened a company in an offshore jurisdiction, instead saying that with the benefit of hindsight, he “should not have given such a sensational opportunity to [his] political opponents”.

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