Please, dear readers! All the information was in the PDFs I uploaded this morning.
I can’t ALWAYS spoon-feed and spell out the facts. Sometimes, I only have time to give you the documents and expect that, as reasonable adults, you will read them yourselves, and not expect me to read them for you and give you the points and the gist.
This morning, I uploaded two PDFs containing the draft amendments to Malta’s Citizenship Act. Here they are again:
Maltese Citizenship _Amendment0 Act 2013 -041013
Malta IIP Regulations Draft 041013 _3_
It is from this website, from these precise documents, that other journalists – including Malta Today – have obtained the details on which they are building their news stories.
So please, don’t come to me now posting comments that ‘according to Malta Today the price of a passport is Eur650,000’ and ‘Malta Today is reporting that..’.
I KNOW THAT ALREADY. Malta Today is reporting what it read HERE, what you should have read in these PDFs THIS MORNING.
Sometimes, I just lose patience.
But if you must insist on having things spelled out, here we go.
1. Only non-EU citizens can apply for passports (but then only non-EU citizens will want to).
2. The actual applicant will have to pay Eur650,000. Of that, Eur10,000 is a ‘deposit’ and non-refundable, but what happens to the other Eur640,000 is not quite clear.
3. It is not only the applicant who will be able to acquire a Maltese passport, but also the applicant’s spouse and the applicant’s unmarried offspring up to the age of 25, and even the applicant’s PARENTS aged 55+. There are further sums of money to be paid for each of these, but they are relatively small.
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Precisely. When I read Malta Today’s story the first thought that came to mind was “Copy cats”. Period.
Labour won’t only be selling passports. It will be buying votes.
Is #3 tailor-made for someone in particular?
The Indian parents of one clean-shaven British Borneo chap perhaps?
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-10-08/news/government-still-investigating-internet-claims-on-shiv-nair-blacklisting-2834628609/
INTERNET CLAIMS?
This is too fucking much.
Did he deny “internet claims” that Shiv Nair is “the consultant to the Maltese Prime Minister”?
http://www.qp.com.qa/en/Homepage/MediaCentre/News/13-07-22/Energy_and_Industry_Minister_holds_discussions_with_Maltese_Minister_of_Energy_and_Conservation_of_Water.aspx
Where the heck does he think the World Bank publishes its black list?
http://web.worldbank.org/external/default/main?theSitePK=84266&contentMDK=64069844&menuPK=116730&pagePK=64148989&piPK=64148984
You know ciccio, you and I understand this, but I’m thinking of all the subliterates who form the solid core of Labour’s voter base, the labourers and housewives in the Inner Harbour region.
I mean, what is the World Bank to them? Or blacklisting, debarment, front companies, fraud, Shiv Nair and all the rest of it?
Someone, a few posts back, wrote that democracy only works with a literate electorate.
Indeed.
An R. Balzan commented on Timesofmalta.com beneath an article about Dyson: “Whoever heard of this Dyson “empire”? Rest assured its departure will not dent Malta’s finances as it is almost irrelevant.”
He or she has never heard of Dyson, so it’s all right then.
I am sure many Labour supporters will apply this “logic” to other issues. Shiv Nair, dan min jahbat? Ivvintawh il-PN biex ifixklu lil Gowzeff.
God help us.
Sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme if you ask me, frightening implications aside.
1000 Tajikistani and Georgian crooks by Eur650,000 – Enemalta’s debt is gone and we’re saddled with them permanently.
I hope the Azerbaijanis do not take Maltese residency and citizenship. We will not be able to rely on their 12 points in the Eurovision anymore.
What are the odds that Judge Farrugia Sacco is already lined up to be appointed Regulator of the Individual Investors Programme?
So it’s a question of money after all, not space. There are much more Chinese than how many immigrants can find themselves on this rock.
Could this be part of this government’s plan to increase its revenue through indirect taxation?
That would be incidental. As with the pre-electoral power station / kontijiet tad-dawl u ilma fracas, the motivation is political, not commercial.
Oh boy…..This ain’t even lateral thinking.
I am a naturalized Maltese and I have acquired citizenship neither through a marriage of convenience nor by paying a hefty sum to anyone.
I have been living here for 24 years. My children were born in Malta and feel Maltese. I have been contributing to the economy of this country, employing several Maltese people, generating business from overseas, adding value to what Malta has to offer and also helping in the promotion of Maltese culture overseas.
Citizenship of a country is not bought, it must be deserved.
Correction. It must be earned.
The correction is …correct ! Thanks la Redoute, je n’ai aucun doute ;)
Thanks Daphne. You confirm my understanding that the cost is of Eur650,000 with no clear indications as to what happens to the funds. As I said earlier, the Act is really badly drafted and I actually wonder whether the person drafting it has any legal expertise that allows him to read law let alone draft it.
Yes dear friends, these are but the shallows. The depths to which we will sink are unfathomable.
When (not if) this act comes into force, we will finally have been sold out. Whereas we already had various high net worth individual schemes that allowed the rich from certain select countries, to move to Malta with their near, their dear and their wealth, there is a subtle difference here. We are suddenly offering citizenship rather than residence. Citizenship confers many more fundamental rights than residence alone.
Under existing schemes, applicants are expected to receive foreign income or annuities beyond a certain minimum that will yield a minimum tax into the Maltese coffers. A certain minimum was also to be spent on the acquisition or lease of immovable property hence introducing additional cash flow. However, all that was paid to the state was an annuity of tax on income remitted to Malta.
The rules of the game are now being changed. This Act talks about an outright sale of Maltese citizenship by payment of a substantial amount of funds that will disappear into some sort of national fund. Needless to say, this will be managed by dubious Labourite cronies who will in turn, earn a penny or two or three from it.
So very South American… Uruguay or Argentina, back in the late 1940s allowed Nazi money to buy one’s freedom and a new life and identity. This fund sounds so Fundacion Eva Peron. A get rich scheme for Malta, with no real safeguards that will open the flood gates to some really dirty money. And dirty money means money laundering which in turn means potential grey and black listing at international level.
But why are we to be surprised by all this. Has Mallia not just effectively laundered half a million Euros of what I suspect to be undeclared income by declaring them in his recent declaration? Has Refalo not given very specific information that is blatantly indicative of tax evasion in the same statement? Yet in both cases, our local watchdogs have remained sleeping.
We have been sold out a long time ago. Nothing more, Nothing less. After being led close enough to the wall by Gonzi and Co we were pulled right though it and out of the looking glass by Muscat and Co.
So far, it has ‘only’ cost our dignity and the self-respect but soon, we will also lose the respect of our European peers as we finally show the true colours of a puppet state that has become a European whore. A whore that has forgetten that its economic alliances, its centre of vital interests lay in Europe and not in the Far East.
This is not our golden age as Muscat would have it. This is the era of bridge burning.
Selling Maltese passports, distorting Malta’s coastline with reclaimed land, whatever next.