Maltese passports flogged in current issue of UK football magazine

They told us that selling passports would be only a temporary thing, that they’d get a clutch of money “for Malta” and then stop. But with the sale of Malta’s EU passports now accounting for 3% of GDP, they just can’t stop.

It’s not only because Henley & Partners, that crooked Joe Vella Bonnici at Identity Malta, and a small army of opportunistic Maltese lawyers, real-estate agents and accountants (the Maltese – always the whores of the Mediterranean) who are hooked on the easy cash, have a vested interest in making Malta a permanent sales outlet for EU passports. Now the government itself is dependent on it, because if it stops selling passports it is going to have to get creative with some other way of plugging that 3% hole in GDP.

They’ve put in motion a vicious cycle that they just can’t stop, a serpent gorging on its own tail. And as they exhaust the obvious markets of crooks, Russians, Chinese aluminium millionaires and Americans with problems in New York, they are having to segment the market and actively flog Malta’s EU passports rather than sitting back and at least pretending to wait for discreet enquiries.

Right now, why British and non-EU footballers should buy a Maltese passport (to be able to play anywhere in the EU but obviously not in Malta, what a waste of time) is a big story in the UK’s magazine for the football industry.