Former CEO of the Malta Financial Services Authority, Joseph Cuschieri, has officially resigned from his position at the helm of the authority.

A statement by the Finance Ministry issued on Wednesday evening said that the newly appointed Finance Minister, Clyde Caruana, has accepted Mr Cuschieri’s resignation.

The Finance Ministry was made aware of the resignation after the MFSA’s Chairman of the Board of Governors informed it of a resignation letter submitted by Mr Cuschieri on Wednesday.

Minister Caruana, in one of the first moves since being sworn into Cabinet earlier this week, thanked Mr Cuschieri for “the work he has done in this institution with regard to strengthening the regulatory aspect, modernizing the structures of the authority, and carrying out reforms in the MFSA in recent years”.

Mr Cuschieri had suspended himself at the end of October after a Times of Malta report revealed he had flown to Las Vegas with casino owner Yorgen Fenech in 2018, with the latter footing the bill.

At the time of the trip, Mr Cuschieri had only been weeks into his new job as CEO of the MFSA, before which he had served as the CEO for Malta’s Gaming Authority.

The Las Vegas trip took place in May 2018, and just six months later, in November 2018, Mr Fenech was charged with complicity in the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Following the revelations of the Las Vegas trip, the MFSA announced a special investigation into the matter led by former chief justice Joseph Azzopardi.