Fears that the VAT department was facing another embarrassing fraud scandal were quelled yesterday by Finance Minister Tonio Fenech.

The Sunday newspaper Kullħadd claimed a second “massive” scandal had broken out. However, the case simply involves one taxpayer who offered a VAT department employee a €100 bribe “to speed up the process”, according to the ministry.

“This official informed his department’s superiors who immediately referred the allegations to the Police Commissioner,” a ministry spokesman said.

The police are investigating the case.

The ministry also denied Kullħadd’s claim that the scandal involved tampering of data from the department’s computers.

Sunday’s front-page story compared the incident to the one that erupted in August 2009 which saw 31 people, including six VAT department employees, charged. The 2009 scam was originally estimated to have involved €10 million.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.