In his first public reaction following the disclosure of the Panama Papers, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said his first priority was to protect the standing of Malta as a financial services centre of repute.

In a ministerial statement in Parliament last night, Dr Muscat said that the Panama Papers had confirmed what Konrad Mizzi had been saying.

However, the investigations would continue, and if any irregularity by Dr Mizzi and Dr Muscat’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, were revealed, he would dismiss them immediately.

He announced that the Commissioner for Inland Revenue had asked for information from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Panamanian authorities about the Maltese companies mentioned in the Panama Papers.

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said the Prime Minister’s statement was surreal and shameful. The Prime Minister’s lack of decisive action was weakening the Maltese negotiating position to defend the financial services on a European and international level, Dr Busuttil said.

He also questioned the brokerage a minister and a head of secretariat may undertake while in office, in view of the disclosed attempts undertaken to open bank ac-counts in Panama and Dubai.

The issue is distracting from the successes in the economic and civil liberties spheres

Dr Busuttil appealed to the Prime Minister to sack Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri and called on “honest people” on the government benches to stand up and be counted.

Calling the leader of the Opposition’s reaction hysterical, the Prime Minister lamented that the issue was distracting attention from the administration’s successes in the economic and civil liberties spheres.

Dr Mizzi said the Panama Papers confirmed that his trust was a family trust in New Zealand, an OECD country obliged to give information to the tax authorities.

He said his company never traded and had no money. The mention of brokerage was standard wording that was not putby himself.

He insisted he never opened a bank account or filled an application for a bank account, although a bank account would have been needed had he rented his property which, he stressed, was not under a loan.