German authorities said Wednesday they had opened a probe into up to 2,000 companies registered in Malta on suspicion of tax fraud, after receiving an anonymous tips. "There are branches of big German corporations on this long list," the finance minister of Germany's most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Norbert Walter-Borjans, told reporters in Berlin.

The nameless informant handed over a USB stick listing 70,000 companies registered in Malta, of which between 1,700 and 2,000 are linked to German corporations, Walter-Borjans said.

He said there was "strong suspicion" that the nominally Maltese firms linked to major German corporations were trying to dodge tax laws as shell companies.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017