Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi are set to face criminal charges over plans to receive payments from 17 Black, a secret offshore company owned by Yorgen Fenech.
A criminal inquiry concluded that the two ex-government officials and Fenech should be charged. Magistrate Charmaine Galea's inquiry was presented to the Attorney General at the end of last week, Times of Malta is informed.
The nature of the charges are not yet known.
The inquiry centred around plans by Fenech’s company 17 Black to pay millions to Schembri and Mizzi via secretive offshore structures in Panama.
At the time of the plans, Fenech was leading Electrogas, the consortium that won a €450 million government contract to build and operate a new power station in Delimara.
Sources said ex-Electrogas director Paul Apap Bologna, as well as Mario Pullicino, the local agent for the floating storage tanker fuelling the power station will also be charged.
Both Apap Bologna and Pullicino held secretive offshore structures similar to 17 Black.
Leaked e-mails revealed how 17 Black was set to be one of the main sources of funds for Schembri’s and Mizzi’s Panama companies.
Times of Malta and Reuters exposed Fenech's ownership of 17 Black in 2018.
A public inquiry into the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia lambasted the police over its failure to properly investigate the Panama scandal when details first begun to emerge in 2016.
At the time, former FIAU director Manfred Galdes had urged investigators to seize the computers of Nexia BT, the financial advisers who set up the offshore structures for Mizzi and Schembri.
The police had instead used legal advice by then-Attorney General Peter Grech as an excuse not to act. Grech had advised that a seizure of Nexia BT’s servers would be a “drastic” and “highly intrusive” move, that could be counter-productive.
A magisterial inquiry into 17 Black and the Panama scandal was only triggered in 2018, following a report by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit that was sent to the police.
Lawyer Jason Azzopardi had filed parallel requests on behalf of former PN leader Simon Busuttil, MEP David Casa and Repubblika, which were eventually merged into one inquiry.
This is the second set of charges Schembri and Mizzi are set to face together in less than a year.
Last year, the pair, along with former prime minister Joseph Muscat, were charged with corruption over the Vitals hospitals privatisation scandal.