Cassola asks Electoral Commission to probe Egrant Labour funding claim

Updated at 1:55pm with Labour Party statement

Arnold Cassola has asked the Electoral Commission to investigate whether the Panama company Egrant may have been a financing vehicle for the Labour Party.

The independent election candidate said that in a recent Facebook post, Joseph Muscat’s former chief of staff Keith Schembri referred to the company as E-Grant.

“This strengthens the impression that this secret company was set up as a fund-raising vehicle for the Labour Party, namely ‘Election Grant’,” Cassola wrote.

He said any fund raising carried out in this way would have breached the party financing law.

Cassola asked the Electoral Commission to investigate the matter and discover if E-Grant was in effect used a funding vehicle for the PL.

Egrant was one of three companies registered in Panama, set up by Nexia BT. The two other companies were subsequently passed on to Schembri and then minister Konrad Mizzi.

The ownership of Egrant was communicated via Skype, although Nexia BT’s owner Brian Tonna had claimed that he remained the ultimate beneficial owner of the company.

A magisterial inquiry had dismissed allegations that Egrant belonged to Joseph Muscat’s wife, Michelle, and found no evidence of the company having a bank account at Pilatus Bank.

However, Schembri’s way of writing E-Grant in a recent post before he was charged on money laundering charges has rekindled speculation that the company may have been a financing vehicle of sorts of the PL.

"Request has no basis" - Labour Party

The Labour Party rebutted the argument put forward by Cassola, noting that the conclusions of the magisterial inquiry exclude these allegations.

"Cassola's request is built on empty conjectures with no basis," it said in a statement. "The Labour Party publishes its accounts and used to do this before the law on party financing was introduced."