It appears that the country has a while yet before it stops hearing the word ‘racket’ thrown around in the headlines and political discourse.

The latest racket emerging pertains to Identita’ – the country’s identity agency, responsible for issuing identity cards and residence permits to foreigners to live and work in Malta.

First exposed by the outspoken former MP Jason Azzopardi, it is being alleged that some 18,000 identity cards were handed out to third country nationals (TCNs) against the payment of a bribe, with the coordination of officials within both Identita’  and the central government.

The lawyer has said that the racket has been ongoing since 2015 and that the cards were issued on the back of marriage certificates and other documents fabricated by Identita’ officials with each document allegedly being sold for prices ranging from €2,000 to €8,000.

The racket first emerged some weeks ago, and Identita’ and the government vehemently denied the claims, and Cabinet Secretary Ryan Spagnol said he would be filing libel proceedings against Azzopardi after the former MP named him in his allegations.

However the allegations did not go away: if anything, they gathered more and more steam.  Azzopardi formally filed a court application requesting the opening of a magisterial inquiry into what he described as an “extensive and systematic scheme” of fraud.

Identita’ again denied wrongdoing, saying that it takes any allegation, doubt or report seriously in line with its due diligence responsibilities, but also saying that it had provided information from an unspecified internal investigation to the police.

A week has passed since then, and the evidence has been mounting. 

Cases are now coming to light of people – members of the general public – receiving mail at their address made out to foreign nationals.  Some were receiving documents from Epic, which had sent out a circular to all its customers, while others were receiving documentation from Mater Dei Hospital about health screenings.

Others even reported receiving the tax refund cheques at their addresses – except they were addressed to people who had never lived there, but were evidently registered as such. But worse still is that people were also receiving letters from Identita’ addressed to foreigners, telling them that their residence card was ready to be picked up.

Azzopardi shared one case on social media showing that 21 Indian nationals were registered at the same address in Mgarr, while PN MP Albert Buttigieg himself reported that he had received letters addressed to foreign nationals at his property – foreign nationals who do not, and never did live there.

More worryingly, Azzopardi exposed a case where an elderly woman moved to a state-run care home, leaving her house vacant.  Within days, the woman’s son noticed that somebody had affixed a letterbox to her house – and that the letterbox had received two letters from Identita’ telling foreign nationals that their residence card was ready for pick-up.

Identita’ this time conceded in a statement that one of the reasons as to why this could have been happening is because a person fraudulently lists an address they are not living in on their application.

That makes it sound like this is the act of random individuals on isolated occasions. What we know so far however points to a far more sinister and coordinated scheme.  It is quite clear that this is an organised operation: multiple foreigners being registered at single addresses, letterboxes appearing out of nowhere – it’s certainly not the work of random individuals.

Malta has seen so many rackets in the past 12 months that the public would be forgiven for thinking that they’ve woken up in the middle of a tennis tournament.  This, however, is the most serious of them all. So far, that is.

It was the Labour government which sold Maltese citizenship to the oligarchs and oil tycoons of the world: now it appears that elements from within have gone as far as selling people’s own addresses. 

People’s own addresses, their safe space, the place they call home, the thing they’ve likely spent the bulk of their lives working for – maliciously used under their own noses, and without them even knowing.  It’s difficult to put into words just how violating this is.

That’s not even to mention the companies which have been defrauded.  Epic, for example, has had its name dragged through the mud through little fault of its own. After all, why should a private company have to doubt what’s on a document as official as a residence card?

The seriousness of this racket, perhaps, hasn’t quite fully dawned on the Maltese public – but make no mistake, this has the makings of being one of the biggest scandals of this last decade.