The legal notice: only the passport applicant needs to ‘reside’ in Malta
His wife, children and extended family of in-laws, grandparents, parents and 20 other dependents need not even set foot in Malta. The legal notice speaks of residency only for the ‘applicant’, which means that those who will be buying passports through the applicant don’t even need to pay a flying visit to Malta until it’s time to collect their EU passport, when they need only stop by for 24 hours and then buzz off to wherever it is they want to be with that passport.
As for the applicant himself, the legal notice doesn’t even specify the terms for residency, and the chief of Identity Malta, which will be administering the scheme, says that it is enough to rent a flat (or buy one) and show your electricity bill.
In other words, the applicant can rent that flat, leave the hall-light on for 183 days, get somebody to go in an flush the lavatories occasionally and leave a tap running for a couple of hours, and not bother living in Malta at all.
My, what a scam. I did say at the outset that Muscat would never agree to residency because it undermines whatever plan he had, or whatever agreement he had with whoever he had it, and in fact, he has not. He threw the European Commission a false sop by pretending to concede to a year of residency, when all the while he planned to carry on as before, but this time with the vote thrown in, colluding with passport applicants to pretend that they will be living in Malta when they won’t be. They rent a flat and vamoose back to wherever, and his government turns a blind eye.
From EU member state to banana republic in the Henley Caribbean, in 10 short months.
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Yet Simon Busuttil says he won.
Jesus, what a country. It really is over now.
I’ve half a mind to write him an open letter, right here on this blog.
So, Simon Busuttil is going to leave it there. If he is, it will be political suicide.
Dear H.P., please just go ahead and type it out. I’ll wager that your half trumps the average whole.
OK, later this evening then.
Please do. I’d love to read it.
Busuttil thinks he’s won because both he and Muscat saw and still see all this as a domestic issue in which one scores moves over the other, and never mind the net result for Malta.
The Leader of the Opposition needs to understand disquisition isn’t something this place follows.
He also has to divest himself of the EU prerogative at all costs. It-tarka implies passive, read servile.
That doesn’t mean giving up the vote.
Just a reminder of what I stated some weeks ago:
the ‘residency’ clause is going to create a situation similar to the school entrance situation in Britain. Families rent a place within the catchment area of a good state school in order to secure a place then bugger off as soon as the place is confirmed.
The PN’s next moves should include the promise that once in power, it will carry out an independent verification of the one-year residence requirement – based on a good faith definition of that term – of all passport buyers under the scheme. In each case where the buyer is not able to produce sufficient proof of such one-year residence, the passport will be withdrawn on the basis that it was obtained on deceit.
The Labour government sailed in to power on the deceitful omission of the “little,” but central, IIP scam detail.
How can a government there by misrepresentation produce one act that can be deemed legitimate whilst in that position?
agree totally, very good
The PN’s next move should be to rally its supporters to a protest march. It should then start a petition, mobilise its volunteers, collect the necessary signatures and give the people the right to have their say on this issue.
Anything less is unacceptable, least of all Simon Busuttil saying that he has won.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/United-Against-Sale-of-Maltese-Citizenship/743546829003845
Yes, even because the legal notice puts the onus of proof on the buyer.
Given the clear consequences of a system subdued to conflict of interest, the verification you mention becomes obligatory. What I wouldn’t do is disclose the criteria.
With Muscat, it’s the only way.
Good one, Ciccio. I watched Owen Bonnici on TV this morning and it is clear that the Labour Party wants to promote this scheme as a highway of legalised loop-holes, through which any applicant who is not acting in good faith will be able to drive comfortably.
The first loop-hole being that only the applicant needs, sort of, to prove his stay in Malta, but his four wives, twenty offspring, and countless in-laws will get their passports without ever having to come to Malta except to collect them.
If the Labour Party weren’t so deeply engaged in fabricating lies, they would themselves be introducing clear-cut definitions of ‘effective residency’ and ‘dependants’ in the legal notice and not avoid even discussing them on the excuse that no amendments can be made to a legal notice.
I just trust that Vivienne Reding, the EU Commissioner, is being kept well-informed about this and understands that she is not dealing with people who are in good faith.
Why can’t the applicant pay for someone’s electricity bill under the applicant’s name for a period of time and call it a day?
I am sure many Maltese families would love to have their electricity consumption paid up for a while by a rich and unseen benefactor from Shanghai or Doha or Uzbekistan.
” …..the applicant can rent that flat, leave the hall-light on for 183 days, get somebody to go in an flush the lavatories occasionally and leave a tap running for a couple of hours, and not bother living in Malta at all …..”
Read this together with the tag line on Henley Estates webpage:
“Henley Estates, a member of the Henley & Partners Group, is the preferred partner of the world’s most established private clients. With leading global real-estate experts and the group’s know-how of residence and citizenship planning, Henley Estates forged a unique group that can fully service the requirements of the most demanding clients.”
That increases the cost to Eur 650000 plus the cost of two timers.
Bereft of any statutory definition of the term “resident in Malta” for purposes of the sale of citizenship, and in the absence of any guidelines issued by Identity Malta in regard to the manner in which a person aspiring to Maltese citizenship may seek to discharge the onus of proof that the regulations shift onto him, the situation is completely open to confusion and abuse.
This is not serious and proper behavior, and it leaves everyone, including professional advisers, guessing.
Also, the regulations speak of residency in Malta of a period of at least 12 months immediately preceding the date of issuance of the certificate of naturalization.
By that time, Identity Malta would have already completed its processing task so that it would appear that (1) proof of residency is not something which Identity Malta itself will be looking into before approving the application and making recommendations to the minister, and (2) demand for proof of having been so resident in Malta will be left to the unfettered discretion of the minister, who might or might not request it, and who might or might not close an eye here or an eye there from case to case and according to the vagaries and merits of the particular case before him.
“In other words, the applicant can rent that flat, leave the hall-light on for 183 days, get somebody to go in an flush the lavatories occasionally and leave a tap running for a couple of hours, and not bother living in Malta at all.”
No, there is no need for all that. All he needs to do is to get the agent who rented out the flat to him, to again rent out the flat to third parties (he won’t need the flat anyway, because we know he’s not interested in coming to Malta anyway) and pocket the rent.
In this way he would get the rent he had paid back, and not even declare the rental income, because “he is living in the flat himself”, thus satisfying all the residency rules, without even setting foot on Malta. Simple.
Henley and Partners advise their clients to buy proprerty because the cost is recoverable through rent to their clients.
Now, tell me, does a property owner ordinarily live in a property rented out to third parties? No.
It follows that lessors can make similar arrangements with sub-lessees, ad infinitum. Henley and Partners will facilitate the process, picking up a commission on every transaction involving their next client.
Of course, that in itself is a totally illegal concept abroad. Also, how will the rental income from such an arrangement be declared?
The Government assisting and promoting corrupt practice?
All this “in good faith?”
And still a lot of people are saying, “U iva, mhux xorta”.
They don’t realise that unlike most of us, there is a large enough number of people out there in the non-EU world who have made a bundle (usually in a rather shady manner) and for whom a million euros is a pile of loose change in a jam jar.
That is not an exaggeration by any means.
As in the old anecdote, we’ve established that Malta is a prostitute; it was only a question of negotiating the price.
Ankle jien ghandi xi nghid fuq din il-bicca xoghol
http://mariataxkieli.blogspot.de/2014/02/maria-u-r-residenza.html?m=1
It’s interesting that these people will have their citizenship and passport applications rushed through, while others who are not citizens but contribute a lot to Malta by living, investing and working here, have to spend days and weeks trying to get their new ID cards.
Many are refused citizenship.
Wouldn’t each family member need to apply to get residence and citizenship and hence they too would be applicants and have to reside before being granted citizenship?
[Daphne – No. There is one applicant per extended family, and the extended family get Maltese passports through him.]
If residency is a meant to be a factor, how does is it expected that the family comes into play?
In relevant cases that arise where there is dual tax residency contested, and where the new Maltese citizen cannot provide sufficient proof of his 183 days in Malta, any serious DTT analysis will take other factors into account such as schooling.
“Good faith” should also translate to “good practice.”
Meta l-prim ministru jkun xeba’ jghaddina passata zmien, ghiduli.
Li ma kienx iblah. Jigifieri dan behsiebu jibqa’ sejjer hekk hames snin shah f’kull ma jaghmel.
Issa tara kemm se jgawdu nies minnha din. Cuc hu min ghama bil-weghdiet u ghadu ‘jemmen’ f’Joseph. Tallaba gabu pajjiz.
Personalment, bejn kuntent b’dak li qed jigri u bejn ssummat.
Government and Opposition must agree, as soon as possible, on exact definitions of ‘domicile’ and ‘residence’.
There are too many interpretations of what these words mean.
When I went to book my daughter at the local state school I was asked to present my electricity/water bill as proof of residency in the area – and the government is using the same manner to verify said residency of national importance: jekk qabel konna pajjiz tal-mickey mouse, issa sirna pajjiz tad-dilettanti.
As far as I know there is nothing in the legal notice which says that the applicant has to be an adult.
So, one of the children of a millionaire can apply for citizenship, spend the better part of a year in a boarding school and be eligible for citizenship.
The millionaire would then gain his passport as a relative of “the applicant”, without having to stay in Malta at all.
Presumably the due diligence is also going to be limited to “the applicant”, whoever it might be.
It makes me mad every time I see an article, or even a comment, saying that the PN have won in this issue. Won what?
This scheme was scandalous from the start and it is still scandalous. The prostitution of Malta has not changed one iota.
I simply cannot believe that the Nationalist Party, and all other Maltese people of goodwill, are going to sit back and do nothing about it.
After all we all know that the government does not have an electoral mandate to implement this scheme.
And let’s face it, one is hardly going to be physically present and truly resident without the rest of the family.