The monetary advantage to each Maltese citizen for every passport sold under the Government’s new citizenship programme would be a meagre €1.50, dwindling to six cents if the applicant included members of his family, PN Deputy Leader Mario de Marco told Parliament.
He said the Opposition was offering a compromise to the Government: suspend the debate on the Bill and one could sit down and analyse the situation.
Speaking during the debate in second reading of the Bill amending the Citizenship Act, the shadow minister for investment accused the Government of not yet having given any information with regard to the commission to be received by Henley & Partners, the international group that will operate the programme.
(Yesterday afternoon, the Ministry of Home Affairs published an extract of the contract insofar as the commission was concerned – see story on page 4)
Dr de Marco labelled the scheme as a vehicle by which the Government wanted to acquire funds from “persons who wanted to escape from their country or who wanted to evade taxes”.
The Opposition has been clear that it does not agree with the “sale of part of Malta”. The Government was setting down a price for Maltese nationality, when the question could not be based solely on a financial basis without serious investment.
The world over, citizenship was linked to the state issuing it, such link being established either through birth, familial links or through a long period of residency. The proposed programme did not reflect this established principle but was simple setting out a “passport over the counter”.
The company taking a commission-based payment on each passport it approved was also the one doing the due diligence. Could one be sure about the evaluation, he asked.
Offering a similar scheme to businesspersons who have been contributing to Maltese economy for a number of years would be in order.
He agreed with such schemes because these individuals had the necessary link to Malta and this was good practice in other strong countries, such as Germany and France. Through the proposed scheme, prospective “Maltese nationals” would acquire citizenship without having ever set foot in Malta.
Only three countries in the world had a similar structure to the proposed Individual Investor Programme: Antigua and Barbuda, the Dominican Republic and the St Kitts – all in the Caribbean. Were these the countries the Prime Minister aspired to copy?
Bulgaria had tried to enact similar legislation but its President had vetoed it. And Sofia’s proposal was stronger and had more securities than Malta’s Individual Investor Programme.
I am convinced the Government has lost faith in ever improving Malta’s economy
Dr de Marco said he was convinced the Government had lost faith in ever improving Malta’s economy and instead was adopting other methods.
An educated guess showed the programme would generate €30 million a year which was a negligible amount compared to the €3 billion made by the Government each year. With this in mind, was such a scheme worth doing?
Malta’s reputation in general and the country’s financial services sector in particular were at risk. This sector generated €300 million a year and employed some 13,000 individuals. This had to be taken into consideration.
The Opposition wanted to see a system which generated interest in Malta and created work instead of the proposed scheme, which did not even mention the mini-mum required investment for a person’s application to be considered, except for referring to the €650,000 payment.