73 passports sold to main IIP applicants • €75 million diverted to social fund

Simon Busuttil pledges to publish the names of naturalised IIP citizens if he gets elected as Prime Minister • Video by Ray Attard

73 passports have been sold to main applicants since the launch of the Individual Investment Scheme, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said. These main applicants have a total of 176 dependents, whose passports have not yet been issued. 

Busuttil, the first to emerge from a meeting of the IIP monitoring committee at Castille, said the IIP report will be published in the coming days.

Emerging a couple of minutes later, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced that €75 million had been diverted to the social fund - 70% of which is going to social projects.

In his comments to the press, Busuttil reiterated his criticism at the government for refusing to publish the names of the people who have been sold citizenship.

“If I get elected as Prime Minister, I will publish their names for the sake of transparency,” Busuttil pledged.

He pointed out that the IIP doesn’t even require citizenship applicants to actually live in Malta for 12 months to be considered “effective residents”. Indeed, the residence system allows applicants to clock up residence points by donating money to Maltese charities, effectively allowing them to pay more money to reduce their residency requirements.

But Muscat dismissed Busuttil’s argument against the secrecy of the newly naturalized citizens, arguing that the government is fully abiding by the law.

“We had sought the Attorney General’s advice on whether to publish the naturalized IIP citizens separately or not, and he told us that the law prevents us rom segregating names,” he said. “The criteria are being followed, and due diligence process is more rigorous than those of similar schemes.”  

Present for the meeting were also Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela and IIP regulator Godwin Grima.