Well said.

The model’s the same, the defective logic ditto.

The premise as insolent.

The Sale of Passport issue is also a bigger issue than it looks. Our financial services sector were built on 3 pillars, and these are are being eroded by the government itself.

1. Our Reputation – Malta has maintained an extremely good reputation at world and European stage. We managed to remain on the white list, and get our system accepted by the EU because of the way the system was run. We are now in a situation where we are putting this under scrutiny.

2. The Quality of our Clients – as an industry we have always been very careful on the type of clients to accept. Led by the IFSP, ensuring the right clients were accepted, even if under fiduciary, was always very important. This has been thrown out of the window by the government itself. Surprisingly, this comes shortly after the Cyprus issue. The whole system was dismantled only because of the perception of the type of clients they had, mainly the Russians and ex USSR, and the government decided to go down that same path – crazy!

3. The “Gentlemen Agreement” within the Industry – for years the industry has adopted unwritten rules between the players. We have been vary fair in promoting the work, and very careful not to poach work from each other. Everyone understood that the world was big enough for all of us to be able to attract a good number of clients. In situations when one law firm was involved in writing the law, say for trusts or the aviation law, they shared their knowledge, allowing everyone to compete. Now the Government itself has brought this to a halt, giving one company a monopoly, not only as regards to buying a passport, but through their consultancy branch offering other services. This will change the way all firms will have to operate, it is now tough competition, and this will lead to problems.

The future does not look bright!

Exactly, I mean €650,000 doesn’t look like a nice round figure, does it? Maybe someone would be rounding it off ‘unofficially’.

In its literature about the projects which it claims it is doing in Benin, Gasol says that gas storage ships will be provided by SOCAR – an Azeri state-company – with which Gasol signed a strategic alliance in December 2012 and with which it is part of the Electrogas Consortium.

I believe that SOCAR will be supplying the floating gas storage in Malta as well.

A week ago, the Azeri authorities announced the results of the general elections BEFORE the election date – so why are you surprised that the Electrogas Consortium would have purchased the gas storage ship BEFORE the tender was awarded?

I lost repect for the Gasans who were ready to send Malta to the pits as long as they benefit personally. I am more careful of what products / services I use in the future, not that it matters.

Regarding the Fenechs, it was sort of expected. Their father was close to Mintoff.

If they cannot even get a background check on a person like Shiv Nair, blacklisted by the World Bank, imagine what will happen when they get requests from fraudsters/criminals/traffickers/members of the Russian mafia/hitmen applying for Maltese citizenship (the ones who do not show up in open lists).

They will not even see it until the point that Maltese passport holders require visa to enter any serious country.

He then expressed his disappointment that he did not have the same ability to create jobs as he had for extracting money.

Joseph Muscat is truly following his master’s footsteps and philosophy, and the results will be exactly the same: making Malta the pariah of western democratic countries.