BVI company set up by Nexia BT belongs to government employee married to man who owes hundreds of thousands of euros to government and creditors

One of the 14 companies included in last night’s Panama Papers publication, which Brian Tonna’s Nexia BT set up through Mossack Fonseca & Co in the British Virgin Islands, is Comerco Services Ltd, set up on 9 October 2013.

The sole shareholder and beneficiary is listed as Mary Ellen Mercieca. Ms Mercieca is a young civil servant from Kercem, Gozo, who works at the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. I rang her at her desk around an hour ago and she confirmed without hesitation that she is the Mary Ellen Mercieca named as the owner of Comerco Services Ltd, but she refused to comment further.

Ms Mercieca is not in business and has no apparent business links. She is a state employee. But around two and a half years ago, she married a man much older than herself – Charlie Andrew Cordina, 44 – who is also from Gozo. Their last known address was in Valletta.

The company name, Comerco, merges the first half of their surnames, COrdina and MERcieca.

Cordina, who was married before, has a long history of running up debts with business creditors and the state. Because he has been faced with numerous garnishee orders and warrants of seizure, he has no assets or bank accounts in his own name. Over several years, he has opened and closed numerous restaurants, bars and cafes in Gozo, running up debts and a police record for breaking the law many times in their operation. These restaurants include Black Jack at the main square in Victoria, Cohiba in Marsalforn (also called, at one point, the Argentinian Steak House), Cordina Caffe in St Francis Square, Victoria (which led to disputes about the use of the name with the owners of the original Caffe Cordina in Valletta), and Sopos in the main square, Victoria.

The registered address for Comerco Services Ltd is Room A703, Guohua Mansion, No. 2, Mingjiang Road, Qingdao 266071, China.

Curiously, running a search in the public Panama Papers data on Ms Mercieca’s original home address in Gozo (her parents’ home) – ‘Invicta’, 10th March 1885 Street, Kercem – pulls it up immediately, but does not yield any link to her or to Comerco Services Ltd. Instead it yields one link to one company officer (company unnamed), an apparently Chinese individual called Jiaming Wang.

Mary Ellen Mercieca and Charles Cordina on their wedding day around two and a half years ago

Mary Ellen Mercieca, from Kercem, an employee at the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries