The Nationalist Party has spoken at last about the government’s “cash for passports” plans, which it has disingenuously called the Individual Investor Programme. Mario de Marco spoke at a press conference today and said that the Opposition’s objection centres on the fact that this is not an investor citizenship programme at all, but involves the outright purchase of Maltese passports.
Unfortunately for the government, this is something which, unusually, the electorate seems to have grasped immediately: that despite the government’s talk of investment, what this is really all about is selling passports for hard cash, literally to raise money to stuff a hole in the short term. When more money is needed, more passports will be sold. It has also been understood, somehow, that the demand by certain individuals for quick, over-the-counter EU passports is what is putting the government under pressure to deliver those passports as soon as it can, by rushing the matter through Parliament and leaving little scope for public debate. Was this a pledge made in the Labour Party’s electoral programme? No, but it certainly looks and feels like a pledge made to party donors who helped fill Labour’s overflowing war-chest.
The possible external pressures on the government to release passports for cash should not be taken lightly by the governed, and that includes the newspapers and other media, the primary conduit of information to the public. Peter Mandelson was brought down as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when Tony Blair was the British prime minister, by revelations that he had tried to help obtain a British passport for an Indian businessman who had donated GBP1 million towards the development of that Labour government’s biggest white elephant project, the very troubled Millennium Dome. And this, under our own Labour government’s definition, would be considered investment in one of the country’s capital projects, rather than a bribe – or shall we call it monetary persuasion? – in poor disguise.
The Nationalist Party is right to focus on the fact that what the government has planned for us – along with its consultants Henley & Partners, who then miraculously won the tender to manage it – is not an investor citizenship programme as run strictly by some other civilised countries. In those programmes, you first invest in developing a business or industry in that country, then after some years – but never fewer than five years – you are permitted to apply for citizenship. Yes, just apply, with no guarantee that you will get it.
Mohammed Al Fayed’s battles with the British government for a British passport – he is Egyptian – have passed into legend. And he owns Harrods, plus rather a lot more in London, which is rather more significant than writing a cheque for €650,000 to the government of Malta.
Mario de Marco said that the Nationalist Party favours a real investor citizenship programme but objects most strenuously to the straight sale of passports for cash, which is what the plans are. He said that the Opposition has held meetings with the government “to try to convince them to change these plans, but they are insisting on going ahead with those plans because they are only interested in making some quick cash”. Yes, and the Prime Minister is not helping to alleviate that bad impression when he speaks, headlining and emphasising the “€30 million” he plans to raise by selling passports, when what he would have said, if his interest were attracting investment to Malta, is “through this scheme we hope to attract good, strong, innovative investors to Malta, who will help keep the economy buoyant in the long term”. Instead, he speaks like somebody who has sold his grandmother’s treasured handmade jewellery for the mere price of the gold from which it is made, and is thrilled because he now has a couple of thousand euros to spend on doing up his car.
De Marco made another key point which has not been given its due gravity by many of those who consider the sale of passports deeply offensive and really cheap. This is the detrimental effect which selling passports for hard cash to unknown quantities and in unspecified numbers will have on the status of that passport (and of Maltese citizenship), and the way it will erode the good reputation of our financial services industry.
We could be more specific about the real risks involved, given this government’s choice of friends and associates: that it is only a matter of time before some choice shady characters from the world’s undemocratic states begin cropping up in the international news, having got up to something yet again, as the holders of Maltese passports.
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