The Maltese have had to work like dogs for decades to change a disreputable image as shifty, shady wheeler-dealers who can’t be trusted. And now this.
A point I made in my column today, Passports for Hard Cash, in The Malta Independent on Sunday:
We could be more specific about the real risks involved, given this government’s choice of friends and associates: that it is only a matter of time before some choice shady characters from the world’s undemocratic states begin cropping up in the international news, having got up to something yet again, as the holders of Maltese passports.
Suffice it to say that in some reports, our prime minister’s friend and consultant (and almost certainly also Labour Party donor), Shiv Nair is referred to as a “Maltese businessman” when he does not hold a Maltese passport, as his ‘A’ (for resident alien) identity card shows. He holds a British passport but is rarely called a British businessman, even though on the World Bank debarment list, his nationality is given firmly and unequivocally as British.
Nair cannot even obtain a Maltese passport under the government’s current scheme, because it is not open to those who already hold EU passports.
God knows what’s coming next, given the sort of people who will be paying for an EU passport thanks to the Maltese government’s generous offer of handing them out for EUR650,000 and for a mere EUR25,000 for wives and children.
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http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-10-20/opinions/passports-for-hard-cash-2937880576/
This prime minister we voted in has broken all his promises and is now treating Malta as his own fiefdom, selling anything as long as it gets him the money to finance his joy rides, as well as those of his cronies of course.
All those years of hard work to make Malta a respectable country in its own right has been destroyed and thrown down the drain.
Daphne, many of us would be none the wiser were it not for your brilliant research and fearless exposures of the scandals being perpetrated by a government that is so not fit for purpose.
Speak for yourself. I didn’t vote this government in.
I didn’t either sir, but I’m afraid, as a nation we did.
And now we are all paying the price.
I thank God that he made intelligent enough not to vote Labour.
After only seven months in government Muscat is proving to be a major embarrassment to us all.
How many dictators, for one, will be availing themselves of this option in case they may one day need another passport?
What name will they give?
Isn’t it ironic that one MP in the previous legislature accused the former government of constituting an ‘oligarchy,’ when Malta is now bound to become a citizenship base for oligarchs from the most shady parts of the world, over whom we will have no control.
https://www.henleyglobal.com/countries/malta/
Will this review be valid in a couple of years time?
Definitely not. They are ‘partners in crime’ in driving Malta to the exact opposite of that review.
But re-writing a review is a very small price to pay in comparison to the goodies they will be receiving.
In there it says:
“The program is planned to be operational for initial pilot cases by 1 November 2013.”
So that’s the time-frame within which the government is working.
Is Franco Debono still concerned about oligarchies and meritocracies?
I doubt that. Having been given what he longed for, his mind is at rest.
But what would happen to him if in 5 years’ time there’s a change in government ?
Do these passports come with the right to vote?
[Daphne – Only if the holders are registered at an address in Malta.]
All work done to date to shed misperceptions about Malta is being undone alarmingly quickly and seemingly quite deliberately. So far all I can see at the end of the Rowdmap is queuing at immigration and feeling ashamed to own up to being Maltese.