Pana Committee head Werner Langen has formally asked Finance Minister Edward Scicluna to explain why two top officials at the government’s anti-money laundering agency were dismissed, the Times of Malta has learnt.
Mr Langen, who heads the European Parliament Committee tasked with investigating the Panama Papers (Pana), said the two officials, Charles Cronin and Jonathan Ferris, were dismissed without justification.
They were informed their services were no longer required on June 16, just days after Prof. Scicluna questioned whether FIAU reports that raised suspicion of money laundering “were written to be leaked”.
The minister has denied any link between his “political” comments and the dismissals.
Two FIAU reports, which refer to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, are the subject of magisterial inquiries, having been referred to the court by the Nationalist party during the electoral campaign.
Extracts from another FIAU report say payments were made to a Dubai-based company called 17 Black.
The FIAU said the payments to 17 Black were made by the company behind the tanker providing LNG to the new power station.
According to extracts from the report, 17 Black and another company called Macbridge, were listed as the firms that would pay money into the Panama companies owned by Mr Schembri’s and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi.
In a statement earlier this week, Mr Langen stressed that Malta had a considerable need to catch up on transparency, prosecution and independence of the competent authorities.
He said Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had, to his day, not answered the questionnaire sent to him by the Pana committee last November and had also ignored oral questions.
Dr Muscat and Mr Langen clashed last month during a heated EP debate about the rule of law in Malta. The German MEP told Dr Muscat he would not let him get off “scot-free”.
He later accused the Prime Minister of putting the European Parliament on the wrong track about Malta’s investigations into the Panama Papers scandal.
jacob.borg@timesofmalta.com