Former Finance Minister and European Commissioner John Dalli owned an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands when he was an MP, an investigation by Times of Malta and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed Sunday.

The revelation was made in the Pandora Papers, which were made public on Sunday evening and which cover 11.9 million confidential records leaked from 14 different corporate service providers across the globe.  

The report says Dalli used nominee services provided by the Panama law firm Alcogal to hide his ownership of the BVI company Westmead Overseas Limited.  

This means that instead of opting to openly appear in any public records as Westmead’s owner, Dalli instead chose to pay Alcogal to disguise his ownership via a nominee company. Speaking to Times, Dalli said that he was advising on a project and his compensation was to be a shareholding in the company if the project came to be.

“Westmead was formed to hold the equity of the project. The project never materialised and the company was not used,” Dalli said.  The company was set up in 2006 at the time that Dalli was an MP.

Dalli said he “resigned” from Westmead upon learning he was going to be re-appointed to cabinet in March 2008.  His daughters took over as the company’s directors six months later.  They exited Westmead in September 2009.  

He denied that a power station project for Malta was the project Westmead planned to hold equity in, though he did not elaborate further.  

Owning an offshore company is not in illegal. Dalli did not declare the company in his asset filings at the time, telling TOM that this was because the company was “inactive”. Westmead was struck off from the BVI registry for non-payment of fees in 2013.