Updated January 25 at 4pm

American businesswoman Julie Meyer, who is at the centre of a credit crisis, received €17,500 in sponsorships for her two events in Malta.

The two events were a seminar at the Malta Stock Exchange, and the Follow the Entrepreneurship Summit at the Westin Dragonara in July 2017.

MP Karol Aquilina posed a number of parliamentary questions about meetings with the woman, whose details were not disclosed in Parliament, but whose identity became clear from the answers referring to her conferences.

His questions come after various creditors and investors have been complaining to the Times of Malta that they would have acted with more hesitation had she and her events not been supported by high profile people - culminating with the Prime Minister, who spoke at the Summit.

Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said he had never been asked to meet her at the ministry, but that the chairman of the Malta Stock Exchange did meet in connection with her seminar there and the summit, which they sponsored to the tune of €2,500. The Prime Minister confirmed that his office had not given any sponsorships, but that Gaming Malta, an independent foundation, had given €15,000 to the summit.

Months after reports starting appearing about unpaid bills and wages, Ms Meyer relinquished the room she kept at the Westin Dragonara for over a year, which had also served as her ‘office’.

Ms Meyer shot to fame after the networking forum company she co-founded in 1998, First Tuesday, was sold to Israeli company Yazam for £50 milllion – her quarter being a considerable return on her original £35,000 investment - but was sold by them just a year later for £1 million, according to media reports.

In 2000, the 51-year-old founded Ariadne Capital and in September 2008, she set up business networking company EntrepreneurCountry Global as a subsidiary. A Dragon’s Den role, MBE, book and TEDx talk all helped to raise her profile.

However, Ariadne Capital has since itself been put into administration, which Ms Meyer claims was instigated by herself.

Recently another liquidation case coming to light – this time about a company called Taggstar in the UK. Taggstar had debts of just under £1 million according to the August 2017 progress report by the liquidators, who also refer to advances made by a company called Digital Media Technologies to Taggstar which were allegedly “misappropriated and used to fund Ariadne Capital Ltd” during Ms Meyer’s tenure as Taggstar’s sole director.

She was also a director of DMT at the time. DMT subsequently started legal proceedings in Gibraltar, according to the official filing. Ms Meyer refutes any wrongdoing and said that she brought the claim against them – not the other way around.

Ms Meyer also told the Times of Malta that the garnishee order filed against her last year had since been dropped.

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