In the wake of the Malta government’s adjustments to its scheme to sell EU passports – and let’s make no bones about it, for that, and not Maltese citizenship, is the commodity under transaction – the international press coverage has been unchanged in its scathing tone. That is not surprising, and the government would have been foolish to expect otherwise. Selling a passport for cash is selling a passport for cash, and the minor adjustments have not changed that – rather, they are risible and offensive, making the chiefs of the Chamber of Commerce, Finance Malta and the Malta Financial Services Authority look ridiculous for jumping aboard to suck up to the prime minister just because a requirement to buy and hold for five years Eur150,000 in bonds has been tacked on. And this when the damage done to the very thing those people are supposed to safeguard and protect – Malta’s reputation as a stable and sound economy and a good place for financial services – has suffered untold damage from the perception in the global media that Muscat’s government is doing this because Malta is in crisis.

Also, can everybody please stop putting about the legend that those who apply to buy Maltese citizenship must now also spend Eur350,000 on real estate here? That’s rubbish. There is no such mandatory requirement. Applicants for the purchase of citizenship have been given a choice: they either buy real estate valued at Eur350,000 (a risibly low price relative to their budgets and their estimation of property values, when you couldn’t even get a broom cupboard for that in a mainland European city) or rent for five years at Eur16,000 a year. So in other words, they have a choice between spending Eur350,000 on real estate or Eur80,000 on rent, and most of them are going to choose the latter. True, on paper rent money goes down the drain while real estate is a capital asset that can be sold on. But when you are dealing with such relatively low sums, who exactly is going to be fagged to go through the hassles of buying and then selling when he can simply instruct his bank with a standing order for Eur16,000 a year to landlord X and then simply let all connections with Malta – bar the passport – lapse after five years?

Because that’s just the point: the people queuing up (and believe me, they’re queuing up) to buy Maltese passports don’t want any connection with Malta beyond that. They don’t want to have to buy real estate here or live here or domicile themselves here. They just want that very, very precious EU passport – the one one that the prime minister, his deputy prime minister and all their merry men and women worked so hard to deny us but now find it convenient to sell to others for hard cash, in the greatest act of mercenary cynicism this side of the year 2000.

It is because the clients Muscat has in mind, the ones he probably has an agreement with already, don’t want to buy real estate in Malta that there was no such mandatory requirement at the outset, and why the government was so adamant that the deal be a straightforward cash transaction. The latest supposed adjustments have been an exercise in yet more cynical manipulation, and it’s amazing how many people have failed to notice, through the smoke and mirrors, that there is still no requirement to buy property in Malta. No, there isn’t.

Muscat and his government – or as the Spanish national daily El Pais put it, “the Malta government led by the socialist Joseph Muscat” – have somehow managed to create the impression that they have adjusted the scheme when in reality they have not adjusted it at all. What they have done is made it mandatory for those who buy citizenship to spend another Eur230,000 over and above the Eur650,000 in cash for their passport: Eur150,000 on bonds or shares which they are free to sell after five years, and Eur80,000 on rent for five years. That’s all it boils down to, and don’t let the line-up at the prime minister’s press conference blind you to these bald facts. Those individuals have some serious explaining to do as to why they were there.

There is something else that needs explaining, and which has been overlooked so far in Muscat’s determination to keep up the Mintoffian tradition of saving unpleasantness to be unleashed at Christmas (collapse of citizenship sale talks; announcement that the public bus service is to be nationalised). What’s to stop those who buy citizenship from selling their Eur150,000 of stocks and shares and their Eur350,000 of real estate (if they bother with that at all) before the five years are up? What’s to stop them breaking their five-year rental agreement immediately they get their hands on that passport? I hear no mention of a clause saying that the passport will be revoked if they sell or stop renting before the five years are up, and quite frankly, even if there is thought of such a clause, I really can’t see how they hope to keep tabs on the share transactions of 1,800 people, especially when made in small amounts. And how do you check whether somebody who doesn’t live in Malta is still renting a flat in Malta? Are we going to have a Department for the Policing of Those Who Bought Passports?

 

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