Minister claims ‘PN loans’ artfully bypasses party financing rules

Justice minister Owen Bonnici has attacked the PN’s recently-announced ‘Cedoli’ fundraising scheme, saying the loans scheme raises more questions than answers.

In a press conference with parliamentary secretary for lands Deborah Schembri, Bonnici said the PN’s system of €10,000 loans raised “serious suspicions” that these had been designed to evade the controls introduced by the new party financing law, which caps donations from individual sources.

“Best practice dictates that a public contract is necessary to regulate loans of over five years, but this scheme is anything but transparent. Does the PN want to evade this by hiding the identities of its benefactors?” asked Bonnici. “Is this transparency? Is the party ready to tell people that they are safe in making loans by private writing?”

The minister claimed the PN’s loan scheme, which will pay a 4% interest on a 10-year loan period, was a coordinated effort to get around the new restrictions. “It was clear that the PN sat down and analysed the party financing law with a view to circumventing it.”

Schembri said the loans scheme was an opaque and precarious system of financing that kept donors secret. “The PN is not being truthful with the public and those who may be prepared to help finance them. Here we have a party in Opposition, saying its first contract is a secret one. It is trying to deceive the people.”

Schembri said the loans system provided an opportunity for illegality since the amount being loaned already exceeded the maximum specified under party financing laws. “What if the loan is not repaid? Will we know who these people are?”

Asked whether opening an offshore account in Panama would give rise to suspicion, Schembri said that it was not a question pertinent to party financing.

“The PN is using transparency as its battle-cry. The law is written, but there is also the spirit of the law, which is being breached in a rampant manner,” Schembri said.

The two speakers laughed off questions as to why energy minister Konrad Mizzi, embroiled in the Panamagate scandal on an offshore company he opened, had been absent from the public eye for the past month. “Mizzi was present at a public event on the 31st March,” Bonnici said.