Electrogas director and shareholder Paul Apap Bologna is the owner of a secret United Arab Emirates company almost identical to 17 Black, the Times of Malta reported on Sunday.

The company, Kittiwake Limited, was set up in the United Arab Emirates in July 2015, two months after Yorgen Fenech – another Electrogas shareholder and the man accused of masterminding the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia – opened 17 Black in the same country.

The company is one of those being investigated in a money laundering probe linked to Fenech and the Panama companies once owned by former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi.

Paul Apap Bologna is one of the shareholders of GEM Holdings – one of the companies behind the Electrogas power station – and a director of Electrogas itself.

In February 2017, just days before journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia first mentioned 17 Black in a blog post, Kittiwake wired $200,000 to 17 Black’s sister company Wings Investments, the report reads.

Five days before the Kittiwake transfer, another company of interest to investigators, EN3 Projects, wired $300,000 to Wings Investments.  17 Black’s name was changed to Wings Development a month after the transfers.

Fenech told the Dubai-based Noor Bank during a later review of Wings Investments’ account that he was involved in a project with EN3 in Qatar and Bangladesh, with the help of Kittiwake owner Apap Bologna.

He said the $200,000 payment received from Kittiwake was a refund for an overpayment he [Fenech] had mistakenly made to Apap Bologna’s company.

Apap Bologna told the public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s death that he had no knowledge of Fenech’s plans to replicate the power station project in Bangladesh, and to have no knowledge about Fenech’s ownership of 17 Black.

He did not reply to requests for comment.