The Accountancy Board today confirmed that Commerzbank AG of Germany is not accepting declarations issued by Maltese audit firms, as reported by The Malta Independent on Sunday last Sunday.

In a statement, the Accountancy Board referred to an allegation made in an article that was published in The Malta Independent on Sunday of 14 May, 2017 with the title “Major global bank no longer accepting declarations issued by Maltese auditing firms”. The allegation was that Commerzbank AG is no longer accepting declarations issued by Maltese audit firms.

The Accountancy Board said it carried out its investigations into the matter and “is fully satisfied that the case in question is only related to a specific situation involving a particular type of company structure. It is not specifically related to the jurisdiction of Malta or to Maltese auditors.”

The Malta Independent contacted Commerzbank for an explanation on why and when they changed their policy, but the bank refused to reply without seeing the full e-mail. This would have only served to identify the source so this newsroom respectfully declined to release the e-mail.

The Malta Institute of Accountants (MIA) had expressed its concern about the TMIS story.