All the necessary resources will be offered to investigators if and when a request to reopen the Egrant inquiry is made, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana said on Monday.

Replying to a series of parliamentary questions by Opposition MPs Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina, Caruana initially declined to shed any light on whether the probe into the Panama company had been reopened. 

Under further questioning, Caruana said his ministry will offer all the necessary resources "if and when a request is made". 

Times of Malta revealed in September how foreign experts cited in a Pilatus Bank inquiry recommended that further investigative steps could be taken to get to the bottom of claims linking a $1 million money transfer to Panama company Egrant.

The Pilatus inquiry, which was separate from the Egrant probe published in 2019, noted that certain specific allegations about Egrant could not readily be explained.

Former Pilatus Bank employee Maria Efimova had claimed a $1 million transaction was wired to Egrant, which she further alleged was owned by Michelle Muscat, wife of then prime minister Joseph Muscat.

The Muscats had staunchly rejected any connection and the Egrant inquiry which was finished in 2018 concluded there was no evidence to back the claims.

Sources familiar with the findings of an expert report, which formed part of an inquiry into Pilatus Bank, said that further steps could be taken with the US authorities to verify if the $1 million transaction took place.

The experts also recommended that Efimova be interviewed by investigators about her claims on the alleged Egrant account and transactions, as well as about an alleged parallel accounting system.

Although the probe did not find evidence of such a parallel system or of any transaction records being hidden or deleted, the experts nonetheless left the door open for further investigations, with their recommendation to interview Efimova and liaise with US authorities about the claimed $1 million transaction. 

The former prime minister in September offered a bullish reaction to the call for the Egrant inquiry to be reopened, saying he has nothing to fear.

“I assure everyone that I have nothing against any further steps to put at rest even the slightest doubt that some people seem to be intent in continuing to raise.  Bring it on,” Muscat wrote.