Finance Minister Edward Scicluna today dismissed as “spin” accusations levelled by a German regional minister about Malta being used for tax avoidance and evasion.

Addressing a PL press conference, Prof.Scicluna said the finance minister, Norbert Walter-Borjans, was fighting for his political career and looking to score some points against the Merkel government.

Mr Borjans claimed yesterday that a data leak had revealed information about 70,000 “offshore” companies in Malta. But Prof. Scicluna dismissed this as pure spin, as Malta no longer played host to offshore companies.

He said the minister had a history of paying for stolen data and not following protocol.

Prof. Scicluna said the minister was misinformed, and the whole issue was a non-story from the start. Such claims did big damage to Malta’s reputation he said, adding that certain countries and journalists wanted to bully small countries like Malta.

Certain countries and journalists want to bully small countries like Malta.

The finance minister pointed out that the Pana committee had not requested recently elected French President Emmanuel Macron to explain accusations that he had an undeclared account, yet they sent for Malta’s prime minister, who was facing similar accusations.

He said there were no issues with the German authorities. Information about individuals was exchanged automatically, whereas information about companies was exchanged on a ‘foreseeable relevance’ basis.

Asked by the Times of Malta to explain the discrepancy between the number of companies declared to the German authorities, and the number of companies linked to German nationals found in the data, Prof. Scicluna said this was said about all jurisdictions they believed to be a tax haven.

In a statement, the German regional ministry said the MFSA’s registry offered information on specific companies without any reference to German taxpayers.

Tests had confirmed that the data on the list of companies was correct and authentic, the ministry said.