Konrad Mizzi’s first reaction on video: ‘I’ve said the truth’

In a first reaction to the press, energy minister Konrad Mizzi has insisted that he had been “telling the truth” all along on his offshore company set-up in Panama, since news of Mossack Fonseca’s global tax avoidance structures was broken across hundreds of newspapers.

“I have always said the truth, that there are no bank accounts. I said the truth all throughout. The bubble has burst in Simon Busuttil’s face,” Mizzi told a Media.Link journalist from the Nationalist party, who doorstepped him outside his office at the Auberge de Castille in Valletta.

Mizzi owns a Panamanian firm, Hearnville Inc, which he acquired in 2015, and whose ownership was transferred to the trustees of his New Zealand trust, Rotorua.

Mizzi said he will close the offshore company.

The new Panama Papers reveal correspondence at Mossack Fonseca that his handlers tried opening a bank account for him in Dubai and later in Panama, but which were refused because he was a politically exposed person.

“I have no bank accounts in any place I have no money in the company. I have subjected myself to a tax audit. There is no secret bank account.”

Mizzi’s company was set up at the same time as the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who also used Mossack Fonseca to create Tillgate, which again is run by the trustees of a New Zealand trust of which he is its settlor.