Nearly three years after Minister Konrad Mizzi was caught having opened a secret company in Panama, he says that with the benefit of hindsight it would have been better if he had not done so.

“Judging from the people’s reaction I should have never set up such a structure in the first place,” he tells Times of Malta.

Mizzi’s name came up again last Wednesday when former minister Helena Dalli said that she would have done things differently, when she was asked to state her position during a hearing which eventually saw her being accepted as a European Commissioner.

Mizzi has now also admitted that he should have done things differently.

Dalli had supported Mizzi when the latter faced a vote of confidence in Parliament in 2016. He had survived the vote.

Mizzi had lost his Health and Energy portfolio in the last legislature when it was revealed in the Panama Papers that he had opened a company in Panama together with OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri. But he was re-elected in 2017 and was named Tourism Ministry.

In a terse reaction, the Nationalist Party said that "the only thing Minister Konrad Mizzi regrets is getting caught".