Arnold Cassola's Egrant Labour funding request cannot be probed by Electoral Commission

The Electoral Commission cannot investigate rumours that the secretive Panamanian company Egrant was used as a financial vehicle for illicit Labour Party donations.

According to the Commission, a court ruling on 8 October 2018 led the Constitutional Court to find several violations arising from the Financing of Political Parties Act.

Particular violations where found with respect to the issuing of fines when one has pursued an illicit arrangement to facilitate making donations to a political party. The court ruled that the Commissioner could not act as investigator, judge and jury on political party financing investigations.

As a result, the Electoral Commission cannot investigate the company "Egrant" unless there is any legislative change to the Act.

The request for the investigation was submitted by Arnold Cassola. The independent election candidate had explained on Facebook how Joseph Muscat's former chief of staff Keith Schembri had referred to the company as E-Grant.

“This strengthens the impression that this secret company was set up as a fund-raising vehicle for the Labour Party, namely ‘Election Grant’,” Cassola wrote.

He said any fund raising carried out in this way would have breached the party financing law.

In reaction to the Commissioner's reponse to the request, Cassola remarked that "Malta has had a non-constitutional, non-enforceable, non-existent political party financing law for the past three years".

"PN and PL can just flout the law as much as they want, since there is no functioning law that regulates them," he said.