Now they want to give citizenship to their cronies and contacts who can’t or won’t pay €650,000

I was waiting for that penny to drop in their avaricious but not very bright minds: selling citizenship makes an official commission for agents and perhaps a backhander here and there for the usual corrupt officials and politicians. But the bulk of the money goes to the exchequer, or is meant to.

The Home Affairs Minister has already been empowered at law for years to bestow citizenship of Malta on individuals at his discretion and in exceptional circumstances of outstanding merit, but clearly these scoundrels are fixing to set up a systemic method which they can use to their advantage.

With such a system, they’ll be able to trade Maltese citizenship for contracts, recycled goods in Panama, tangible and intangible assets, for themselves or for ‘the country’, and we will never, ever know how the deal was made.

When citizenship is sold, that’s a straight transaction. You put your €650,000 down on the table and you get your EU passport courtesy of the government of Malta. But when citizenship is granted on a discretionary basis, it become a TRADEABLE COMMODITY, which can and will be exchanged for all kinds of other goods and services.

What they’re proposing here is actually far more dangerous than selling it.