From perfectly legal yet ethically questionable sale of citizenships, to the visa and residency permit racket run by Joe Sammut, to the abnormally high number of visas given to Algerians and Libyans, Malta is acquiring something of a bad name for itself in international circles.

Irrespective of how each subsequent fire is stamped out by the government, the damage caused with each passing scandal is causing untold damage to the country. It is clear that Malta must absolutely clean up its act, and not only because we are on the cusp of assuming the presidency of the European Union.

Today’s issue reports on how a visa racket was allowed to develop even with respect to an agreement Malta made to treat Libyans injured in perpetually ongoing hostilities, and how, instead of issuing medical visas for genuinely injured Libyan nationals, many of those visas went to perfectly healthy people, among them criminals, who were willing and able to fork out hefty sums for Maltese, and hence Schengen Zone, visas.

This racket, as with the Joe Sammut scandal, saw people being admitted into Malta without the proper checks and balances being applied and as such, just about anyone from the war-torn and terrorist-infested Libya could have gained access to Europe – a major security concern that no one is really talking about.

It is indeed hoped that ongoing investigations will get to the bottom of who, exactly, was allowed entry into Malta, and Europe, in the process. This issue alone should be one of great concern not only to Malta, but to the whole of the European Union.

Just this week, Malta’s good name was once again muddied in several sections of the international press – from Brussels to the UK and from Germany to Poland after the publication of an article in an influential leading Brussels weekly newspaper on Malta’s cash-for-passports scheme, which was later picked up by media outlets across Europe.

That article, in addition to the obvious problems with the very concept of selling citizenships, also took Malta to task for seeking to conceal the names of new citizens by publishing the list of new citizens – in alphabetical order using the new citizens’ first names instead of their surnames.

The latest list of new Maltese citizens was published earlier this month and, once again, new citizens’ names were presented in alphabetical order in accordance with their first names. But this repeated anomaly is not down to a clerical error, it is most intentional and traces its roots back to Malta’s haggling with the European Commission over the passports-for-cash scheme.

When the programme had been first pitched back at the end of 2013, one of the main bones of contention had been the government’s insistence on not publishing the names of those who had purchased their citizenships – in other words it had insisted on keeping the names of the people purchasing Maltese citizenship a state secret.

In so many ways, the very notion ran against the grain of the very concept of citizenship of a country and to forming part of one’s adoptive community. No amount of money was enough, many had argued, to offset the fact that Malta will have incognito citizens, whose status as actual citizens of this country is known to none but a very select few.

Yes, technically the names are published but the whole of Europe still depends on the vetting process applied by the Maltese authorities, which they claim is the most robust process in the world.

But many in Europe, and especially considering the multiple visa scandals the country has been subjected to, would be correct to question whether the EU’s common security is being compromised by the actions of a few rogues in the bloc’s smallest member state.

Malta must not become known as the land of passports and visas, we are much better than that. We have so much more to offer than simple access to the wider European Union. And the fact that we are acquiring such a reputation is a national disgrace.