• The PL and PN raised similar totals (€14.9M and €14.8M) but through structurally different opacity patterns: 52% of PL income comes through the unnamed €500–€7,000 bracket, while 48% of PN income comes from anonymous sub-€50 fundraising events.

Since 2016, Malta’s two main political parties have together received €29.7 million in donations. The public can only discover the identity of donors behind less than 1% of it.

An analysis of donation reports submitted by the Labour Party (PL) and Nationalist Party (PN) to the Electoral Commission shows that, of the €29.7 million received since the Political Financing Act took effect, only €256,900 (0.86%) came from named donors.

The Political Financing Act requires parties to file annual donation reports broken into four brackets:

• Donations under €50 collected at fundraising events such as marathons. No donor identities are recorded.
• Individual donations under €500. No donor identities are recorded.
• Individual donations ranging from €500 to €7,000. Donor identities are recorded by the parties but not publicly disclosed.
• Donations over €7,000. Donors are named and publicly listed.

The two parties have raised similar totals. 

The PL has received €14.9 million (through to 2025) and the PN €14.8 million (through to 2024, as it is yet to submit its donation report for 2025). 

The €500- €7,000 bracket, in which donor identities are recorded by the party but not made public, is where most of the opacity lies. 

Together, the two parties have received €13.1 million through this bracket, more than 50 times what they have disclosed in named donations over the same period. More than half of the PL’s income, €7.7 million (52%), comes from the bracket, to the PN’s €5.3 million.

The PL also discloses roughly three times as much in named donations as the PN (€193,000 vs €63,942). The PN, by contrast, draws 48% of its income from sub-€50 “manifestation” donations made during fundraising events, in which no donor identity is collected.

In 2024, Follow the Money’s Transparency Gap project listed Malta as the fourth-least-transparent country in the EU for donation disclosure. France, Belgium and Spain, where disclosure of donors is not allowed, were the only countries that fared worse.

Both parties can also draw revenue from media companies and other business interests, but neither publishes regular audited accounts. Labour’s One and the Nationalist Party’s Media.link have not filed in over 15 years; a separate PL-owned company last published accounts in 1999.

Labour Party

Nationalist Party 

The companies include the media arms of both the Partit Laburista (PL) and the Partit Nazzjonalista (PN).

The PN’s Media.Link Communications Ltd’s last published audited accounts for 2003/2004, roughly 21 years ago. One Productions, owned by the PL, last filed in 2010, 16 years ago. At the time of their filings, the two recorded accumulated losses of €6.9 millionand €2.7 million, respectively.

The most extreme case is the PL’s MLP Holdings, the main shareholder of One, whose last published accounts date back to 1999, 27 years ago.

Malta’s Financing of Political Parties Act requires parties to submit audited annual accounts to the Electoral Commission, but the obligation formally applies only to the party. 

Commercial entities owned or controlled by a party – including their media operations – are regulated under the general company-law regime enforced by the Malta Business Registry. 

The PN:

The Nationalist Party lists two companies in its latest financial statements: Media.Link Communications Co Ltd and Euro Tours Company Ltd, an entity controlled by the party but owned through Media.Link Communications .

Euro Tours’ most recently published audited accounts date back to 2004/2005, filed 16 years ago. They were submitted to the Malta Business Registry in 2010.

When Media.Link last filed audited accounts, accumulated losses stood in excess of around €6.9 million (LM 3 million).

The Nationalist Party’s latest accounts (2024) outline the party’s investments and financial exposures related to Media.Link Communications. While not a full set of accounts for either subsidiary, it provides the following details:

• The PN’s total contribution to Media.Link rose to €18.4 million (up from €17.4 million in 2023);
• In 2024 alone, it provided €1 million (up from 653,199 in 2023);
• The PN also paid loan repayments of €594,000 on behalf of Media.Link;

The PN also obtained a bank loan with repayments of €16,500 per month to restructure the credit facilities previously used by Media.Link.

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, PN’s spokesperson said that the party had nothing to add to what had been publicly stated.

The PL:

The Labour Party, in government since 2013, has a larger portfolio of companies. 

MLP Holdings, the registered shareholder of One Productions and Sound Vision Print, has not published accounts since 2000, with the most recent dating back to 1999.

The latest Labour Party (2024) accounts show that the party’s stated investment in the holding company is minimal, at just €2 in 2024.

On its part, One Productions Ltd’s accounts date back to 2010, filed 14 years ago. Sound Vision Print Ltd’s last published accounts date back to 2010, filed 13 years ago. 

For the 2010 reporting period, One Productions reported a loss of €507,000 and total debt of €2.7 million. Back then, ONE’s auditors warned that the conditions cast “significant doubt” over its ability to continue, although the accounts show that its year-end loss was smaller than €833,000 the previous year.

One Productions is also the majority shareholder of Red Touch Fone Ltd, another company that has not filed accounts in around 14 years (2010).

The only company with relatively recent audited accounts is Orpheum Theatre Ltd, which registered its accounts for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, all logged in the Malta Business Registry on 24th February 2026.

According to the latest accounts published by the Labour Party (2024), the cost incurred by the party on Orpheum Theatre Ltd was almost €2 million in both 2024 and 2023.

In response to Amphora Media’s questions, Malta Business Registry’s CEO, Dr Geraldine A. Spiteri Lucas wrote:

 “Under the Companies Act (Cap. 386), all registered companies are subject to the same statutory filing requirements. In cases of breach, the company is not “allowed” to avoid the responsibility; rather, it has entered a state of default subject to the enforcement mechanisms of the Registry”

“Sanctions are applied uniformly to all defaulting companies, though they are administrative rather than public-facing. Kindly note that the MBR imposes automatic late-filing penalties consisting of an initial flat penalty upon default and daily accumulating penalties.”