The Economist: “Passports to Ignominy”
The link to the full piece in The Economist is below. It talks about the use of passports obtained for drug smuggling, crime and terrorism. Malta is not mentioned, but look at the final paragraph and consider that we in Malta have lumped ourselves with those Caribbean nations, because of the savage greed of Henley & Partners (which runs the programmes in the Caribbean) and the avaricious stupidity of certain members of our government.
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Published in The Economist, yesterday:
(…)
All this has caused scarcely a ripple in Suriname, whose foreign minister says he expects no upset to relations with the United States. Reactions to similar shenanigans in Belize have been louder. There Elvin Penner, a junior immigration minister, was sacked in September over a passport issued to Kim Won-Hong, a South Korean then in a Taiwanese prison while resisting extradition to his own country for fraud. Mr Penner personally signed his passport picture and application form, but says he was misled through an identity fraud. Mr Kim was sent to Korea on September 26th.
Since then, Belize has buzzed with reports of passport and visa fraud. Another junior minister, Edmond Castro, is under pressure over alleged visa fraud. If both lose their parliamentary seats in possible recall votes, the government would lose its majority. The government says it will tighten passport procedures.
Others are still in the game. Dominica and St Kitts & Nevis have long-running “economic citizenship” programmes; Antigua and Grenada joined them this year. Antigua and St Kitts & Nevis offer visa-free access to Canada, the Schengen countries and Britain. For Dominica, the fee for would-be citizens starts at $100,000. St Kitts & Nevis asks for a $400,000 investment in approved property or a $250,000 donation to its sugar-industry fund. Grenada has outsourced marketing and management to a private firm with offices in Florida and Hong Kong. All these schemes look like accidents waiting to happen.
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http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21590574-murky-world-bouterses-passports-ignominy
I really do not think this sale of passports scheme is a good idea, but can anyone explain to me how someone like Mr Zahoor gets a British Passport.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/magazine/article3925990.ece
[Daphne – Ah, a Labour stalking-horse. Don’t worry – I’ll take you at face value and interpret your question as genuine. 1. Nowhere in the article (did you actually read the article, given that you have to subscribe?) does it say that the Zahoors are British citizens. Quite the contrary, right there in the first bit that you can read without subscribing, it says that Mrs Zahoor is Ukrainian. If you Google him, you’ll find that he is Russian and that the flat in London is just one of many homes they own in the more expensive parts of Europe. You don’t need to be a British citizen to own a home in London: for longer stays you need a VISA, if you are Russian or Ukrainian, and you don’t need a visa at all if you live as they do, spending no more than a few weeks at a time there. Useful note: the British press describes people with British passports (who are by definition British subjects/citizens) as British. It is not like the Maltese press, in which a Maltese citizen will be described as a ‘Somali with Maltese citizenship’.]
Reading the above article I am starting to have second thoughts about it. Considering the crass incompetence of the whole Labour I would not be surprised if the vast majority of them will end up recommending applicants, signing their documents and giving testimonials which in most cases would turn out to be fraud.
This would lead ‘Joseph’ to despair, call an election and give this country a fresh opportunity as happened back in 1998.
“Joseph despair and call an election?” You must be joking.
He is too enamoured of his ‘power.’ Before the election he used to accuse Lawrence Gonzi of being “iggranfat mas-siggu tal-poter.” However, I am sure that, irrespective of the woes that Labour will make Malta go through, the day Joseph Muscat will call an election before he absolutely must, will be the day pigs will fly.