[WATCH] Muscat flags more ‘errors’ in transcript of Egrant declaration of trust

Muscat flags more ‘errors’ in transcript of Egrant declaration of trust

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat cast further doubt on the veracity of a transcript of a declaration of trust, that was published by Daphne Caruana Galizia and that alleges that his wife is the beneficial owner of a secret offshore Panama company.

Responding to questions by MaltaToday at a press conference, Muscat questioned why the transcript lists his wife’s place of birth as Rabat when she was actually born in Attard. 

He said that Michelle Muscat’s ID card wrongly lists her place of birth as Rabat, the town she grew up in, and suggested that whoever wrote the transcript had gleaned the information from the Electoral Register.

THE STORY SO FAR

• Muscat and Busuttil on Xarabank: ‘Declaration claiming Egrant belongs to my wife is fake’
• Caruana Galizia says text of declaration of trust lists Michelle Muscat as holder of Egrant share
• Prime Minister and his wife give testimony to magisterial inquiry
• [WATCH] Busuttil calls for Muscat's resignation, calls for national protest

Moreover, he said that “experts” have told him that it was strange for the transcript to have listed his wife’s date of birth and place of birth, but not her ID or passport number and her address.

He also dismissed the transcript as a fabrication on the grounds that it listed the registered address of Egrant as Nexia BT’s San Gwann offices, as shown in the Panama Papers that was released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last year.

“Whoever falsified the document gleaned the information from the ICIJ’s database. This was a big mistake because the database refers to the address of intermediaries, whereas declarations of trust must refer to the company’s registered address. The company’s registered address is in Panama and not in San Gwann.”

Caruana Galizia on Friday night publishes a transcript of two declarations of trust that she said were issued by two Panamanian companies Dubro Ltd SA and Aliatar SA, both of which hold shares in Egrant.

In the transcript, dated August 2015, the two companies declare that their shares in Egrant are being held as nominee of and trustee for Michelle Muscat.

The declarations were allegedly passed on to Pilatus Bank by Nexia BT and stored away in a safe in the kitchen of Pilatus Bank, whose offices are located at the Whitehall Mansions in Ta’ Xbiex.

Caruana Galizia has also claimed that Egrant holds a bank account in Dubai and that in March 2016, it received a single payment of $1.017 million from a company whose ultimate beneficiary owner is Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev.

The Prime Minister has vehemently denied the allegations and has sued Caruana Galizia for libel.

At today’s press conference, he reiterated the argument he had posed on Xarabank on Friday – that exists clear documentation to prove that Nexia BT chief Brian Tonna is the sole shareholder of Egrant and that he never transferred the shares to a third party.

“The two companies in question [Dubro Ltd SA and Aliatar SA] are subscribers, meaning that they had originally formed the company in question [Egrant]. Documents prove that they had passed the company on to Brian Tonna in 2013, so how could they then have passed it on to a third party two years later?”