PN top brass asked MPs about overseas accounts

Shadow ministers were forewarned by Nationalist Party officials about whether they were harbouring undeclared cash in foreign accounts before Wednesday this week.

Two MPs contacted by MaltaToday yesterday said that members of the PN’s frontbench were asked on Tuesday and Wednesday, whether they were holding any Swiss bank accounts with monies they had not declared for tax purposes.

Michael Falzon was contacted on Wednesday by The Malta Independent over whether he had a Swiss bank account: recently elected on the PN’s executive committee, Falzon resigned his post on admitting having held as much as €465,000 in a bank account at HSBC Privée in Geneva.

He announced his decision in the afternoon yesterday before the newspaper went public with an unauthorised recording of the telephone interview. Falzon said he would resign both his PN executive role and his position on the government’s oil procurement committee.

“Shadow ministers were candidly asked by the party’s top brass whether they were holding any cash overseas,” the MPs told MaltaToday, on condition of anonymity, when MaltaToday yesterday made its own inquiries with Nationalist MPs over the Falzon resignation.

“Falzon obviously was not forewarned,” one MP said, who added as an aside that any suspension of PN officials on tax avoidance would still have to be heard before the PN executive.

Michael Falzon yesterday told MaltaToday he repatriated his cash to Malta some time before 2008.

Opposition leader Simon Busuttil issued a strong statement yesterday he would suspend any PN official that holding undeclared cash in an overseas bank account. But he also told MaltaToday that he was not privy to any information on any such officials who held undeclared cash overseas.

“It is incumbent on anyone who might have such accounts to come clean and make their position clear. What I have done over the past weeks and also today is to explain my position on those who might have such accounts.”