Government ‘hides’ golden passport beneficiaries by not listing family names in alphabetical order

The Maltese government has published the annual list of naturalised citizens – which include the global elite who are paying €650,000 for their visa-free access into the European Union – in the dead of the August heat.

Under Maltese law, the ministry for justice – which is responsible for the IIP through the identity management authority Identity Malta – has to publish the list of naturalised citizens once every year.

But it has issued them in a way that makes it close to impossible for disinterested readers to identify possible ‘celebrity’ or big-name applicants who are buying Maltese citizenship under the Individual Investor Programme.

Since 2014, the Maltese government has been publishing these names in the government gazette in alphabetical order but only according to the first name. That means that group applicants of the IIP do not appear under the same family name but could be at the either end of the list if say, the husband’s name starts with ‘A’ and the wife’s name starts with ‘Z’.

The list is specifically designed to be unreadable, so that it prevents users from even transposing the names onto applications like Excel, so that they can group applicants according to the surname.

Another glaring example of deception here are the errors in the formatting.

For example, in the ‘A’ segment of names, the alphabetical order is suddenly broken up by ‘T’ and ‘D’, because the surnames have erroneously crept into the name column.

So the name ‘AndriiKhirsin’ – which already sounds like a name and surname – is followed by the surname ‘Andrii’ – which itself sounds more like a name.

The next entry is ‘TertyskyiAndrzej’, which now is clearly a surname for the preceding name, and a new name. These errors abound.

Here is the PDF list published by the government.

And you can find a list of IIP citizens that MaltaToday has had access to in the last year.