Updated 9.45am to add statement by Tonio Fenech.

Former ministers Austin Gatt and Tonio Fenech have dismissed claims by Joseph Muscat that after stepping down from their ministerial posts they took up roles in companies that had links to the government.   

The former prime minister was complaining of "two weights, two measures", after calls for investigation into payments he received from a Swiss company, which received millions from Steward Healthcare, which runs three state hospitals. He insists the payments were for consultancy work unrelated to the Maltese government.

Muscat was paid a total of €60,000 to his Bank of Valletta account last year, the first payment taking place just two months after he stepped down, an investigation by Times of Malta has found.

In a statement on Tuesday, Muscat said that Gatt, after stepping down from his ministerial post, took up roles in a group of companies that has a direct relation with at least two entities that were under his direct responsibility for many years. Tonio Fenech, he claimed, had given services to companies in the financial services sector, a sector he was responsible for for many years.

Gatt said in a statement to Times of Malta that Muscat's claims were 'nonsense'.

He explained that from April 2013 until he resigned in June 2020, he was a director of Carmelo Caruana Co. Ltd. (CCCL) and a number of its subsidiaries.  

"CCCL is a normal freight forwarding company like tens of others in Malta and has no relationship at all with either government or any authority and is not even regulated by any other governmental authority.  

"I was also director of the holding company that owned CCCL which operated solely as an investment company and again had no relationship whatsoever with government or any authority thereof," Gatt wrote in a letter to Times of Malta.

Former finance minister Tonio Fenech said that following his departure from public office as a minister and subsequently from an MP, he never accepted any engagement or acted as a director on a company that had in any way benefited from a public contract or a public concession.

Tonio Fenech.

"When I was approached to consider an engagement with a company that had the possibility to benefit from a public contract, I declined this engagement as I felt that this would conflict my role then as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

"All the companies I acted as a director to were fully disclosed to parliament for the years I was a Member of Parliament as required by the Code of Ethics including the remuneration made from such engagements. Any remuneration that I received for my services for these companies passed the AML (anti-money laundering) scrutiny of the bank holding my only personal accounts in Malta, all were remittances from companies registered in Malta," Fenech added.