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Maltese PM's wife cleared in inquiry over offshore shell company
Thomson Reuters
VALLETTA (Reuters) - 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.
(Reporting by Chris Scicluna, writing by Valentina Za; editing by Jason Neely)
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