Hold the front page: Turkish businessman will spend money restoring Maltese houses to sell them when he and his entire family are given Maltese passports for cash

Murat Karaduman

There was the most peculiar item on the TVM news last night, and it was such obvious propaganda for Henley & Partners and for the government’s ‘policy’ of selling Maltese citizenship for ‘investment’.

The big news was that a Turkish businessman (is he going to be a special guest at this year’s national celebrations of the 450th anniversary of “the victory of the Maltese over the Turks”?) called Murat Karaduman has applied for Maltese citizenship for himself and his entire family, and if he gets this citizenship for the lot of them, he will consider investing in Malta.

What sort of investment? Oh, you know, nothing big – small project but interesting ones. He thinks there’s lots of scope for restoring old buildings and selling them, building a couple of things here and there.

Sandro Chetcuti and his Malta Developers Association, I thought immediately to myself, must be gagging with excitement at the imported competition.

So why are Murat Karaduman and his entire family after Maltese citizenship? TVM had no hesitation in reporting that he’d told them it’s because they want to be able to move about the European Union freely as EU citizens – nothing to do with Malta in particular, though they might consider spending a bit of time here. He had barely heard of Malta and had certainly never been here, but when he applied for citizenship he popped over for a flying visit.

I just had to laugh and shake my head. This government propaganda totally ignores the fact that Malta has been a European Union member state for 11 years. In all this time, Europe’s biggest investors and any businessmen have had free and unencumbered access to investment in the Maltese market, and those who have invested haven’t done so as a ‘xi dwejjaq, but I have to’ condition on buying EU citizenship via the good offices of Joseph Muscat and his cronies.

With businesses the entire length and breadth of the European Union able to invest in Malta as and when they please, the government parades before us a Turkish businessman who might spend some money on restoring old houses and putting them back on the market if he and his family are given Maltese passports in return for cash.

But that has been the fundamental flaw in the government’s justification for selling passports – that it brings investment – right from the start. We’re in the European Union. Those who already EU citizens without having had to buy a passport from Muscat’s government are free to invest.