Who gives a damn about New Zealand? The company is in Panama.
From the Prime Minister’s interview with The Malta Independent, published today:
Which company will be conducting these independent audits on Mizzi’s and Schembri’s companies and how confident are you that this will be a transparent process?
I am sure that the name of the company, when announced, will be a guarantee in itself. This is a leading international company that has no links to any government. It is unprecedented for a Minister to submit himself to such an audit. It is also not true that our Tax Commissioner does not have the right to obtain information from New Zealand. We are signatories to the OECD and the owner, Minister Mizzi, instructed the trust to give the Commissioner access to information.
NEW ZEALAND? The trust in New Zealand is just, to use the Prime Minister’s own fatuous analogy, a box. What that box contains is a company registered in Panama. That’s all the New Zealand authorities can tell him – what we know already.
To find out what the Panama company does, and what bank accounts are linked to it, he has to go to Panama, AND GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, JOSEPH.
But of course, he knows exactly why Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri fixed up that operation there. He’s just pretending not to know. If he hadn’t known, he would have kicked the two of them down the stairs of the Auberge de Castille and out through the main door in front of the waiting press.