The first lot of new Maltese who bought their citizenship
The government has announced that the first lot of applications for (bought) Maltese citizenship have been approved. The names of these new Maltese will be published in The Government Gazette “in due course”.
The problem?
We won’t know who they are. The government is going to mix their names in with those who obtain Maltese citizenship by orthodox means: through marriage, for instance, or because they have a Maltese parent.
This defeats the purpose of the pledge, hard-won from the government which preferred non-publication, to make public the names of those who buy Maltese citizenship.
By intermingling their names with the names of those who haven’t bought their citizenship, in the same list on The Government Gazette, the government has held on to the next best thing to secrecy: confusion. We’ll know that Mr X has become a Maltese citizen, but we will not know whether he paid for it.
This is wrong. As has come to be a habit with this government, it has not allowed people to see the small print. I thought this was coming, because when this government readily agrees to something, it is a clear sign that it has a cheating-card up its sleeve, and it was quite clear (I wrote about it at the time) what the cheating-card would be: publishing the names along with all the others, so that nobody would be able to tell them apart.
It is not only the public’s right to know for which the government has negligible respect. It is also for those new citizens who haven’t bought their citizenship but whose names will be on the list with those who have, leaving the ‘innocent’ exposed to suspicion and speculation, which is really, grossly unfair. And wrong.
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The more Muscat fools us the more we will learn how to handle him. He is becoming incredible by the day.
There is so much that is wrong about this government. It seems intent on doing the wrong thing all the time.
Daphne, this has happened recently at BoV. MUBE challenged for the publications of those (long list) who got the promotion, and BoV replied by sending a link to ALL the staff list with their current grade. One could simply search for those who got the promotion in 2014, but you couldn’t get the many who got the promotion BACKDATED. Nice disguising indeed…
This government is a fraud.
Those, with brains, who helped vote it in deserve to be shot.
Pure and simple.
In the age of Google it won’t take long to filter the ones who bought it
Well everyone who paid 300 grand more than the new asking price must feel like a right schmuck.
Daphne,
How is it possible that someone has received citizenship according to this scheme? What about the 12 month residence requirement? Is that gone out the window?
The legal notice was a little bit over a month ago, how could any one have applied, gone through due diligence, been resident for 12 months and taken their oath of citizenship?
[Daphne – The prime minister’s explanation, given in an interview in Malta Today, is that the applicants have been resident in Malta for some time already.]
This still won’t stand – even if the applicants had been in Malta for some time already (let’s buy that for now), the due diligence process as stated by both the Government and Henley – will take 6 months minimum.
So it is either that these “applicants'” were not screened or if they were, their application “process” started before the program was even in place?
Could be.
And isn’t it nice to live in a place where your democratically elected government goes behind your back every other day?
Nothing new there, Labour had a secret agreement with North Korea landing us thousands of automatic assault guns, ammunition and riot control trainers thrown in for free.
Still a mystery what we provided in return. Guess.
I think that a this point in time we need to look up the new meaning of ‘due diligence’, don’t you?
Is there a paper trail to prove it? or has the paper trail been doctored by the Malta Taghna estate agents and authorities, including MFSA?
Terrible thing when a Government is known to be corrupt, when there is proof of this, when it happens before our eyes and yet business proceeds irrespective of this with partners including banks and legal firms closing a blind eye.
As though the rest of us have our yellow stars delivered and affixed and are waiting to be deported, only the deportation procedure is transactional and our identity in the hands of Henley.
The Whistleblower act and any Police intervention expected is a joke of worse proportion.
I’ve seen destructive smooth liars like this at work, and they are connected to Nair, as is Joseph Muscat.
Smart Alecs who lie to your face and where anything goes as long as they personally profit – from one scam to the next. The longevity of the scam assured as long as no one breaks ranks to report it and speak out. And woe betide them if they did, because there would be zero effective support or safety net: “kollox skond il-ligi.”
What’s the link between Nair and Henley?
I saw that excuse.
1.But still three months have not past for the due diligence to be complete. Perhaps they were fast tracked, but I thought that was not going to exist.
2. Do you know what kind of bonds or stocks are available to be purchased for 150,000 Euros? have they decided?
I just took a look at Identity Malta’s website. IIP.gov.mt
Also a bunch of amazing things here.
1. IT is amazing how they are promoting Henley, instead of the other way around, but that is another story.
2. It is amazing how Henley is the only foreign agent ALLOWED to participate in this whole program, forget the fact that they are running it and keeping all the money from it for six months up to two years.
3. They are advertising on their home page that this IIP is the only approved program in Europe. That is a load of crap. It is the only program, where the European Parliament denounced it and said that it needs to be changed. It also is the only program where the word residency is meaningless, and does not include a physical presence clause, which is what the European Commission is expecting and everybody knows that.
Also, although I have known about the whole Henley deal, it still is amazing to me that nobody has woken up at the government and understood how this deal stinks of corruption.
What Identity Malta should write on it’s home page is that this is the only program run by a foreign company in the interests of a foreign company.
Still just shocks me.
Nuri,
We all know it stinks of corruption.
Labour in Malta stinks like a diurian and never changes. There are no fine ideals.
Labour and the PL approve of corruption: that’s how they got rich, or somewhere, under Mintoff and this is a sequel.
Switchers who switched because they wanted precisely this state of affairs may have not got to renegotiation stage yet, but they will end up losers. That is the nature of these scams.
The rest of us know it, see it, are disgusted but who do we go to? The police? If you expect any Whistleblower activity from anyone in Government administration: those who might very well want to do something about it won’t. This is Malta and people are all connected. Revenge may or may not be direct. Most likely it will continue to be indirect. People remember how it was in Mintoff’s time. They are scared to speak up and to say anything. Because it won’t go anywhere, because no one else will stick up for them, because people suddenly develop a social allergy for those who are frank and speak their mind, because children get ignored.
Because everybody pinned their hopes on the European Union to deal differently with this scum. The EU is meant to be our safety net from this lot. And whilst the MEPs did their job well, the Commission itself was weak.
Now the European Commissioner for Fair Competition could and should be asked for an opinion, but the sentiment is: Joseph Muscat will play another fast one and we’ll be back to square one. Who at the EU is going to stick his neck out to say that all is not right in the State of Malta? Which Commissioner? With John Dalli around still messing up both playgrounds?
The Whistleblower Act is an act of intimidation.
That’s what it’s like to be on the other side of PL.
They’re not very clever, just very slimy and extremely nasty.
Another precision, Nuri:
I’m not being hypothetical. I’m talking real time personal knowledge and experience about actions that have been put in place well before the elections. As well as actions in Mintoff’s time.
Otherwise, without that to back me, I wouldn’t be saying anything. As it is, I have put myself out on a limb because I know from initially unknowing personal experience with the very same lot, that this behaviour IS not only difficult to pin down but to trace to the roots for the whole picture to be seen.
What you see is the tip of the iceberg:
In order for this tangle to have been put in place, the plans were not – as Joseph Muscat said in his lie – “put together after the elections.”
Each scam and relationship will have a material or “career” benefit lined out for the participants under each pyramid. Every time the plan is thwarted or dented, someone will suffer. You can be sure that those who suffer are not making Joseph Muscat suffer in turn, but eeking out their frustrations – in intangible but real terms, on the “other side.”
The personal and “intimate” nature of his relationship with each in the pyramid, and therefore also the nature of the imbalance of the reward, ensures that the one does not discuss with the other.
Joseph Muscat makes certain of continued undented support by deflecting these frustrations towards those he conveniently calls negative. What the people in his labyrinthine pyramids fail to absorb, is that he not only needs their support, but crucial to his self-centered efforts for personal gain is their continued investment in him. What they do not factor in, is the cost of the intangibles in the investment. And this is what he counts on most of all. This, is the pivot to all of his actions.
Only when the balance of the intangibles produces not one loss but a whole string of consecutive losses, will the pyramid structures around him start crumbling. The intangibles will prove more sensitive than the material tangibles.
That will take time. As yet, the doubting Thomas phase is not mature enough. Until then, scapegoats are strategically placed to further deflect the blame from the centre: his ministers and all those given positions on a plate. For the latter, replacements will be queued up with dagger in hand.
One can only try to open their eyes and help them contain their eventual losses. Right now, the carrot beckons.
With each loss, the con-artist will create a new golden illusion as the next goal is cleverly designed to contain the losses of the previous “investment pyramid.” This will be a renegotiation, or a brand new scam, for the dissatisfied – or in effect cast off – players to hook into once again.
Not just preposterous but psycho in the planning of it all.
In its essence and plotting, it is consciously and deliberately aimed at society’s vices, not virtues.
This is the moment-to-moment of how it unfolds.
He learns from a master of the game.
Nair, together with his circle, is the keeper of the master.
Transparent and accountable government. Don’t you see that this confusion of mixing the names makes it also difficult for any reconciliation with our Treasury books?
Absolutely. How is the transparency of proceeds from the sale of passports going to be protected?
Labour will leave the accounting to Henley and Something, of course.
They have satisfied the residency requirement because they’ve been here for quite some time, ok fine.
That is just one requirement however. Has their property been valuated? Have they invested the required amounts?
Even though they have been resident for the required amount of time, shouldn’t due diligence also be conducted once they have submitted their application? If it has been done so quickly and they have been approved, it cannot have been an in depth due diligence exercise.
So citizenship can be revoked after all
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140317/local/court-upholds-foreign-ministers-decision-to-withdraw-citizenship-acquired-fraudulently.510993
[Daphne – Anything can be revoked or rescinded that is acquired fraudulently. It is not the citizenship that is the point here, but the fraud.]
Wasn’t the Opposition supposed to be on the screening committee ?
Didn’t Simon Busuttil say that each applicant/application will be closely vetted? Have these have been vetted?
[Daphne – Simon Busuttil? What does he have to do with it – he’s not in charge.]
Yes let’s blame Simon Busuttil shall we? (insert major eye roll here)
This ploy by our government is pure fraud. It should be reported to the proper EU contact to make it publish a separate list.