Declaration of assets for ministers dating back to 2016 have finally been made public, five years after they should have been tabled in parliament.

The missing asset declarations were provided by Prime Minister Robert Abela on Monday, in reply to a parliamentary question by Opposition MP Karol Aquilina. 

Submitted by cabinet members in February 2017, the declarations refer to assets held by cabinet members in 2016 - the same year the Panama Papers scandal was exposed. 

The data leak revealed how a sitting minister, Konrad Mizzi, and a top-ranking government official, Keith Schembri, both owned undeclared offshore structures. 

Abela tabled the declarations some weeks after the Nationalist Party called for the government to do so. 

The ministerial code of ethics obliges cabinet members to list their property holdings, bank deposits, investments, and income for the previous year. 

Assets and liabilities are listed on a one-page form which is filled in by hand. There is no standardised way of filling in the form, or any way of confirming submissions made in illegible handwriting. 

Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat declared he had €73,000 in bank savings - a similar figure to other years during his tenure - and that he owned one property in Burmarrad.

Muscat listed no bonds, investments, or partnerships with other companies and listed no pending loans. 

Muscat resigned as prime minister after investigations into the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed alleged links between his administration and the 2017 assassination.

Former Economy Minister Chris Cardona. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Former economy minister and then-Labour deputy leader Chris Cardona declared he owned three properties and had €127,000 deposited in the bank.

He declared his government pay of €61,044,88 and an income of €41,400 in rentals.

He also declared 25 per cent shareholding in a company. The company name is written in an unintelligible font. 

He also declared over €400,000 in loans. 

Cardona resigned as deputy leader of the Labour Party in 2020 after he was named in court in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. He stepped down as MP in April of that year. 

A prominent inclusion on the asset declaration of Konrad Mizzi, then Energy Minister, is his Panama company Hearnville Inc.

Mizzi had sought to keep the company a secret after setting it up through consultancy Nexia BT, only for it to be exposed one year prior through the Panama Papers leak.  

He also listed Rotorua Trust, which was created in 2015 as a family estate and family planning structure through Orion Trust New Zealand Limited. 

He added a note that the declarations on 31 December 2016 were ‘subsequently in liquidation’.

Konrad Mizzi during a recent PAC sitting

Mizzi listed €373,045 deposited in the bank and also declared that he owned 4,000 Malta International Airport shares. Mizzi would go on to be appointed Tourism Minister some months after the declaration was filed. 

He listed a house in London, including a garage and an apartment in Sliema. 

He listed an income of €83,678 pay and that he had over €300,000 pending in loans. 

Mizzi stepped down as minister the previous year following the arrest of Yorgen Fenech, a businessman and accused mastermind of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

Fenech had been revealed to be the owner of secret company 17 Black, the company that had been named as being the vehicle for funds to be deposited into secret Panama companies owned by Mizzi and former chief of staff Keith Schembri.

In recent months, he appeared in the headlines once again when he faced questions during parliament’s Public Accounts Committee about his time as minister responsible for the controversial Electrogas power station project- which back when he was Energy Minister, was responsible for the granting of the contract.  

See the full declaration of assets, including those of other 2016 cabinet members, in the attached PDF.