Why is Jose Herrera taking care of this new residency/visa scheme for Chinese people?

Jose Herrera, a parliamentary secretary in the Ministry for the Economy, is at present in Shanghai, launching and promoting a Maltese residency and visa scheme for Chinese people.

Those who take up the scheme will have to “invest” a minimum of 500,000 euros in Maltese real estate, rent, government bonds or “giving a financial contribution to Identity Malta”.

And here we have it – another system tailor-made for graft.

But right now, I’m more interested in why the scheme is being managed by Jose Herrera’s office and not by Identity Malta, which has been moved – very strangely – from its natural home in the portfolio of the Minister of the Interior to the little pink hands of Noddy, Minister for Justice.

I now have a better perspective on that peculiar lunchtime photographof notorious cocaine trafficker Meinrad Calleja having what was clearly a business lunch inexplicably with Charlon Gouder, a consultant in a position of trust in Jose Herrera’s private secretariat, accompanied by a Chinese woman.