PN misses Electoral Commission deadline extension to submit its 2021 audited accounts

The Nationalist Party has missed an extension deadline to submit its 2021 audited accounts to the Electoral Commission.

The Nationalist Party (PN) is yet to submit its audited accounts for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, as well as its donations report for the years 2022 and 2023.

The Opposition party was handed a 4 August deadline for its 2021 accounts.

Sources close to the PN said that no new deadline was given for the party to submit its 2021 accounts, but it was told to “submit them as soon as possible.”

MaltaToday is informed that the 2021 accounts are currently being audited, and will submitted shortly.

The PN also faces a 16 October deadline for its 2022 accounts and donations report. Sources said the 2022 accounts and donations report are also being audited, and will be filed soon.

For its 2023 audited accounts and donations report, the PN has been given a deadline for next January.

In an interview with MaltaToday earlier this year, Piccinino had conceded it was a shortcoming by the Opposition party that accounts had not been submitted, saying they would be submitted “in the coming months.”

“When they [the submitted accounts] are analysed, one will realise it was an administrative shortcoming, and not a legal one. You must appreciate the PN has its challenges when it comes to resources, and issues with finances,” he had said.

The Nationalist Party ignored five requests by the Electoral Commission to publish its accounts for 2021 and 2022, according to the commission’s reply to a judicial protest filed in court earlier this year.

The judicial protest was filed by Labour MEP candidates Daniel Attard and Marija Sara Vella Gafa asking that the PN regularise its position at law.

The commission said it asked the PN to file the necessary documents as required at law in letters dated 18 January 2022, 6 April 2022, 12 January 2023, 10 April 2023 and 14 June 2023.

In its court reply, the commission said its powers to sanction political parties that fall foul of the law have been curtailed by a constitutional court ruling from 2018. The court ruled back then that the commission could not act as investigator, judge and jury on political party financing investigations since this breached the right to a fair trial.

Since then, the commission has been powerless in enforcing the law and will remain so unless parliament makes the necessary legal amendments. So far, no changes are being prospected.

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