When the government’s plans to sell Maltese citizenship were unveiled some two years ago, many were those who recoiled in shock over the mere suggestion of the concept, while others were quite unconcerned one way or another.

But when the government dangled the one billion euro carrot - the amount of funds it said the country stands to gain – thousands of people were immediately convinced.

They were even more convinced when they were told that those one billion euros would be spent by a National Development and Social Fund on new projects that would raise the country’s quality of life to previously unimaginable levels.

The reality, a little over a year and a half down the road, is quite different.  The government had later tweaked the National Development and Social Fund’s share of the passport sales booty to 70%, with the remaining 30% of proceeds going straight into the public budget.  And once it comes time to start spending those millions placed in the fund, rest assured that those funds will not go toward special one-off projects but instead toward necessities that the government would likely have had to cover all the same.

A year and a half down the road and it transpires that 73 people have purchased Maltese passports so far, plus 176 of their dependents – amounting to a total of 249 new Maltese citizens and a total of €75 million having been handed over to the Fund.

If matters continue at this rate – 249 citizenships being sold every year and a half – we are looking at a further 10-odd years until we reach the programme’s cap of 1,800 passports.  And that is being conservative since the first year of sales of any hyped-up and new-to-the-market product should be its best. 

Another 10 years of Malta’s Prime Minister peddling passports at conventions across the globe – as per the government’s contractual agreement - and another 10 years of the country’s Prime Minister being a Maltese citizenship ‘salesman’, unless the opposition manages to come to power in those 10 years and altogether scraps the programme as pledged.

Moral objections to the selling of passports and its ramifications on wider EU citizenship aside, there were two main bones of contention when it came to the nitty-gritty details: the one-year period of effective residency one must fulfil before being granted Maltese citizenship, and the government’s previous insistence on keeping the names of those who purchased Maltese citizenship secret.

In both cases, the government applied some cosmetics to the rules and it is now conveniently skirting them.

With the European Commission having insisted that an effective term of residency must be a prerequisite to Maltese citizenship, the government relented and agreed to a period that was to have been based on the international tax law model: at least 183 days – six months and one day – spent in Malta during that 12-month period.

This agreement, however, is apparently being flouted left, right and centre.  In reality, those seeking Maltese citizenship only have to visit the country twice: to apply to become citizens and to take the oath of allegiance.

Moreover, new rules have been introduced that have seen applicants earning themselves ‘residency points’ by making charitable donations, meaning that the well-heeled can simply pay to circumvent residency requirements. 

As for the publication of the names, the government had at first fought this one tooth and nail to keep the passport-purchasing citizens names’ secret, but when it realised that this extremely valuable marketing tool was not being accepted by even the scheme’s main proponents, it relented and agreed to publish the names as it does with all new Maltese citizens who became Maltese through other channels.

The government periodically lists new citizens in the Government Gazette. And when it has in the past, it has always done so alphabetically by surname.  The last time around, which included the first crop of IIP citizens, it published the whole list of all categories of new citizens, as promised, but instead it did so alphabetically by first name.

The obvious ploy was to disguise those who purchased their passports: whole families are rarely given Maltese citizenship in one fell swoop, except for those qualifying under the IIP. 

The opposition leader had requested a list of new citizens at the last meeting of the security committee, and he was refused.  When he queried the government’s opposition to publishing the list separately in the public domain, the Prime Minister said the Attorney General had been consulted and had advised the government that separating the two lists would have been against the law.

This, however, still does not explain the way in which this last list of new citizens was alphabetised, in a departure from the norm, by first name.

Still, two years down the road since the issue first hit the headlines, and the government is still playing games with and twisting the citizenship rules and in the process it continues to hold a thick veil of secrecy over an area of government that should be the most transparent.