Maltese PM's wife cleared in inquiry over offshore shell company

An inquiry has found no evidence that the wife of Malta’s prime minister benefited from a secret offshore company, contrary to allegations by murdered reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Malta’s attorney general said on Sunday that the 15-month investigation had failed to establish any links between the family of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Panama-based Egrant.

“A hundred suspicions do not make one certain fact,” it said in a statement.

The inquiry was launched after allegations by Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist who died last October in a car bomb attack, that Muscat’s wife Michelle owned a shell company established by Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Muscat had denied the claims that his wife received money from the daughter of energy-rich Azerbaijan’s president through that company.

To counter a mounting backlash triggered by the accusations and the investigation, Muscat last year called an election in which he gained a larger parliamentary majority.

“Michelle and I are both relieved this nightmare is over,” he said on Sunday.