The selling of Maltese citizenship must stop immediately as it is "a window for corruption and organised crime", Repubblika said in a statement on Monday.

The NGO referred to a Times of Malta report which read that Semen Kusov, a Russian man who acquired a Maltese passport in 2022, "ran a "professional banking service for criminals across the world" as part of a wider billion-dollar money-laundering network," citing the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA).

Repubblika described this report as "another episode in a long series which shows that we are selling our citizenship to people who want nothing from Malta other than to help them hide their criminal intentions and activities". It continued that in doing so, the interest is only in the money while the victims of organised crime around the world are ignored.

It commented that the Maltese government is satisfied that the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice agreed that it is not a European competence to interfere with who Malta designates as citizens. The NGO added that the government anticipates that the ECJ will ratify this view.

"The fact that citizenship is within the competence of the Maltese government does not mean that selling citizenship to people who have nothing to do with Malta is a good thing. We reiterate as we have always done that it is our view that the sale of citizenship denatures citizenship itself," Repubblika stated. It continued that Instead of belonging to a republic and a community of obligations and rights, "our government has made our citizenship something that can be sold and bought to and from whoever wants to use it to steal, cheat, and hide the money they stole."

Repubblika concluded by reiterating its appeal for the selling of Maltese citizenship to stop.