Of course, the German regional finance minister, Norbert Walter Borjans, is wrong when he says there are 70,000 offshore companies registered in Malta. For a start, all those companies are onshore and most of them are local trading companies of local residents and entities.

However, the problem that Finance Minister Edward Scicluna faces in defending Malta is the reputational damage caused by the government he forms part of because of the way it handled the Panama Papers saga.

Scicluna is also guilty of having sided in a vote of confidence in Parliament with the minster found to have opened a secret company in Panama a few days after the last election.

It is pointless and very unconvincing for Scicluna to label the German regional finance minister as one having “a history of paying for stolen data and not following protocol”. Unfortunately for Scicluna, he forms part of a government whose Prime Minister has done nothing when confronted with the fact that his chief of staff  and one of his ministers opened companies in Panama a few days after the 2013 electoral victory.

Nor has Joseph Muscat shown much energy to find out who is the owner of the third company, Egrant, caught out in the same Panama Papers mess.