Companies owned by political parties should be regulated under a party financing law and their commercial transactions made public, Partit Demokratiku said today. 

The requirement should also apply to companies in which political parties owned shares, it added. 

In a statement issued today, PD also called for existing party financing laws to be amended to ensure that the public could easily check where political parties and their candidates received funds from. 

It said it disagreed with the current system, which gave the minister responsible the power to establish regulations by which reports are made available to the public. 

"This information should be in the public domain rather than kept for mudslinging purposes," the party said in a statement. 

The PD's calls come following controversy about donations made by db Group to the Nationalist Party. The PN yesterday said €70,800 it received from Mr Debono's companies were part of a "commercial relationship" its media arm Media.Link Communications had with db Group-related companies. 

db Group has denied this and challenged the PN to say what commercial services the two entities had exchanged. The group alleged that the PN solicited the sum to pay for salaries of two of its top officials and then sent it invoices through Media.Link.

"Malta cannot afford that its members of parliament, political parties and candidates take the honest taxpayers for a ride," the PD said in its statement. 

"In a normal functioning democracy, the public have the right to know from where the money is coming from."