Can they possibly be more lick-spittle?
So the reason why the prime minister did not call a press conference immediately his talks with the Opposition leader collapsed, but for 6pm instead, is that he needed time to get his lick-spittle crutches sorted.
The “new programme”, he said, has been agreed upon with the Chamber of Commerce, Finance Malta, the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association and the organisations representing estate agents.
The chairmen of Finance Malta and the Malta Financial Services Authority, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, sat at the press conference table alongside the prime minister and his dour men. So did big Muscat fan Tony Zahra, though he is no longer president of the MHRA. The newly elected president, Paul Bugeja, was not there.
They are all so very lick-spittle, colluding in the government’s machinations to create the impression that this is somehow a “new programme”. All it took to get them to jump on Muscat’s sale-of-passports bandwagon was the addition of a requirement to buy just Eur350,000 in real estate and another Eur150,000 in bonds, and the removal of the secrecy clause.
Yes, they’re that cheap. Chuck in the price of a mid-range flat in a second-rate location and the requirement to buy bonds when the Maltese market mops up anything going with oversubscription already, and the Chamber of Commerce, the Malta Financial Services Authority, the MHRA and Finance Malta behave as though this is all very different to what they were objecting to before.
Unbelievable.
The primary objections to the scheme – the very ones that caused an international media flurry of mockery and scorn – had little to do with the amount of money involved and a great deal to do with the fact that Malta is selling EU passports outright, a cheap trick pulled on our fellow EU member states and one which makes us look as bankrupt and desperate as Cyprus.
Maybe the big cheeses at Finance Malta and the Malta Financial Services Authority think that adding the requirement of buying a mid-range flat and Eur150,000 in bonds spread over five years will make us look less bankrupt and desperate for hard cash. If so, they are nuts and really don’t understand how the international media work – just as Muscat and his dour men did not when the story first broke right across the globe.
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Enjoyed listening to Simon Busuttil earlier on today and couldn’t agree more when he highlighted that applicants should earn their right to citizenship as opposed to throwing cash and purchasing a passport. This scheme needs to be scrapped, fullstop.
I hope that the Opposition will come out strongly against this collusion. It is nothing more than a collusion. Like you say, Daphne, when Labour is in power, people in general, including associations, are afraid to stand up and be counted.
Re your last paragraph:-
As they have it in the U.S.A. “no matter which way you cut it, it’s the same baloney”.
David Curmi once lodged a complaint – directed at me – with my past employers, for my supposedly exchanging confidential information with someone I know who worked for the same company he did at the time, after he presumably couldn’t stomach the fact that ‘his’ company lost a client to the company I then worked for.
He was wrong, naturally, because I would never have done such a thing. I lost all respect for him after he tried to tarnish my very good reputation in the field Not everybody deals dirty, Mr. Curmi.
Paul Bugeja, Zahra’s successor as president of the MHRA, has made it a point to say that Zahra was present in his ‘personal capacity’.
Obviously most people took it that the MHRA are in complete agreement with the scheme now.
Mr. Bugeja should have told Mr. Zahra that he should not have been there in the first place.
As for the Chamber of Commerce etc, I take it they were in agreement since they were present too.
Rush onto the bandwagon mates, because that is how you make more and more money whilst pontificating to the gullible peasants.
Ghalhekk Tony Zahra dejjem kien jeqred taht il-gvern l-iehor u qatt ma jigu turisti bizzejjjed ghalih.
Mela dal-gvern spicca partit ta’ dawk li jridu jhaxnu bwiethom – ara ghal haddiema ta’ l-Arriva, Joe Mizzi ma hadhomx mieghu ghal-konferenza stampa ghax dan il-gvern sar tal-miljunarji u l-haddiema saru it-tapit li jimsah saqajh fihom.
Ara ghal dawk il-fabbriki li qedin f’diffikulta, dawk lanqas biss jaghti kashom u l-haddiema ma jafux x’isir minghhom.
Simon Busuttil stated the Opposition wasn’t aware of the details about to be announced by Muscat. Do not, ever, enter any negotiations behind closed doors, again.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte shall now accept to have their practice compared to that of Henley & Something.
And wasn’t it cheap to sell passports for a measly 650,000 Euros in the first place? Muscat’s ‘amendments’ made right that one, doubling the price, he WAS selling us cheap.
Honestly.
The news of yesterday was, of course, not the details of the Citizenship for Sale Mark II, but how prime minister Joseph Muscat made a show with the “top brass” of the “constituted bodies” around that table in Castille, in which he humiliated them.
Joseph Muscat must have been working on yesterday’s show for a number of weeks. There was an expression of self-satisfaction on his face yesterday as he announced the new scheme. In that expression I could hear Muscat’s ego scream “Just look at these ‘men’ around me: I have managed to politically castrate them in one blow.”
What’s this effect he has on “men”? Or is it just their desire to appear close to power? Being part of the power itself, maybe?
At one of his recent public speeches (was it on Super One radio) Muscat was reported to have said that the government made a mistake when it did not consult with the stakeholders. With hindsight, it is safe to believe that he said that after he had obtained their “consensus” and that he was paving the way for this mise-en-scene.
The President of the Chamber of Commerce, the President of Finance Malta, the Chairman of the MFSA – where is all their self-respect gone? How could they become a party to the Sale of the EU Citizenship and Passport Scheme?
To think that the Sunday Times editorial of last Sunday was entitled “Don’t demand respect, earn it.”
The big cheeses at the Chamber of Commerce, Finance Malta and the Malta Financial Services Authority – I think in there you have the big cheeses of the Board of Trustees of the “Central Bank”-like entity which Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat plans to set up to create more state puppets.
A Sovereign Wealth Fund, he said. Sorry, but to me, this idea sounds even sillier than the Sale of Citizenship scheme itself, if this is possible.
So the prime minister of Malta is setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund to administer the income from the sale of Maltese and EU Citizenship.
Perhaps a more appropriate name would be the Sovereign Wealth Fraud.
And he said it will be like the Norwegian Sovereing Wealth Fund. Did any of the journalists in the independent media check what the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund is all about?
It consists of government owned funds which, as expected, administer the PETROLEUM INCOME and the pension funds of Norway. In turn, they invest the proceeds on international stock markets, real estate and so forth, and are administered independently of government.
But so what? Malta does not have sovereign wealth, or at least, not as yet. We do not have oil or other resources, so the idea of setting up a Sovereign Wealth Fund to administer the income from the sale of Maltese and EU Citizenship is ridiculous.
So prime minister Muscat is effectively treating the Maltese and EU citizenship like crude oil or any other commodity. And what is worse, the Chamber of Commerce, Finance Malta and the MFSA take this idea seriously. How sad.
At this point, I will not be surprised if prime minister Muscat also proposes the setting up of a Maltese and EU Citizenship Stock Exchange.
Rather than the Norwegian Sovereign oil fund, this scam looks more and more like the Libyan Investment Authority that ‘managed’ (or rather depleted) a similar fund.
The MLP should be very familiar with the latter and I would not be surprised if the same person/s dealing with Gheddafi came up with the same scheme to set up ‘a fund’.
Possibly the biggest mistake being done by the Labour government of prime minister Joseph Muscat is to involve the Malta Financial Services Authority and Finance Malta in the Citizenship for Sale “Individual Investor Programme” issue.
This is linking the Citizenship for Sale Scheme with Malta’s financial centre services, and this is a gross mistake.
The two things must be kept separate.
The Citizenship for Sale Scheme is not acceptable to the EU and to the Maltese. I am sure that we will be hearing more from the EU and locally about this issue. Therefore, officially putting it under the same spotlight with Malta’s financial services is going to do more harm than good to our economy.
The Citizenship for Sale has no direct connection with financial services. It is a government financing issue and it must in no way be put in the same basket with financial institutions and investment services.
I still cannot understand why not much is being said about the huge amounts of money this horrid scheme will be raking in. JM is still insisting that they’re going into a FUND. Who will be scrutinizing the accounts?
Secondly, is the clause rendering the passing on of information about applicants a criminal offence, still on?
These are two major points the PN should be hammering the government on. So far, the arguments against are too feeble.
The whole thing is a scam. The price for a cheap Maltese/EU passport changed from EUR650,000 to EUR730,000 with no strings attached – a pittance for the shady people that Joseph Muscat is trying to attract in China, Russia, and similar countries.
I did not reach that conclusion instantly, but thanks to Tony Zahra, or the unrelated presence of Tony Zahra, it was easy to join all the dots.
The presence of Tony Zahra at the press conference was a significant red flag. If he approves, then it must be questionable.
The shady people that Joseph Muscat is targeting have no intention of living in Malta and consequently have no interest in acquiring a property, no matter how cheap it is (even at EUR 350,000). It is an unnecessary hassle.
Joseph Muscat, through a possible collusion with Tony Zahra, has offered them a golden alternative. They can rent a ‘property’ or rather an ‘address’ for EUR80,000 over a period of five years. This rent can be seen as a pitiful increase in the price of Maltese citizenship which is already at the lower end.
Who is best suited to offer these ‘fake addresses’ for rent, given that these customers have no intention of ever living in Malta? People like Tony Zahra. He can rent suites, or rooms (to be rebranded as apartments) for five years using the existing infrastructure, while at the same time keep going with the hotel business.
The same hotel room can be rented out to numerous family members given that nobody will ever live there.
The presence at the press conference of Finance Malta and MFSA is pretty obvious given that they are government appointees and they feel they must follow orders. What puzzles me is how the Chamber of Commerce fell for this scam.
Tony Zahra does not represent anybody except his own egoistical self – the others were coerced to attend, looking like they are at a funeral. Lackeys all of them.
What, exactly, was Tony Zahra doing there?
A scheme within a scheme. It smells like a skunk.
And where was the minister of finance ?
Tony Zahra was there to make the gullible idiots think that the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association is backing the government in the plan to sell passports.
Paul Bugeja, the new MHRA chairman, was quick to point out that Zahra was there in a personal capacity, but not many people will have noticed his clarification – certainly not as many as those who saw the photograph/video of Zahra sitting near the prime minister in that press conference.
It is worrying is the fact that Joe Bannister was there. How does the Malta Financial Services Authority come into it?
Who is Paul Bugeja?