Russian refused Maltese passport now creates ‘first space nation’

A military scientist who spearheaded the design of Russia’s S-500, the country’s most advanced surface-to-air missiles, was denied Maltese citizenship, documents seen by MaltaToday confirm. And now he is busy building the Earth’s first ‘space nation’.

It might appear galling to be refused citizenship to one of the EU’s smallest member states, but Igor Ashurbeyli is undeterred, because his ‘Asgarda’ space nation already prides itself of over 178,000 members.

And yet in Malta he spent over €600,000 to put a deposit on a €3.54 million Vittoriosa boutique hotel, setting up a Maltese subsidiary of his Socium business group, and then fork out agency fees to apply for Maltese citizenship, only to be denied the privilege of a Maltese passport under the Individual Investor Programme.

Documents seen by MaltaToday show the expense through which Ashurbeyli went to set up a base in Malta.

The owner of the Vittoriosa hotel, Remko Silk, had benefited from an EU grant through the Malta Tourism Authority to renovate the palazzino and turn it into a hotel. That meant he could not just sell it off as a private residence except as a going concern.

Emails seen by MaltaToday show that the plan was to have just one full-time employee at the hotel, with the rest of the staff on a part-time basis, so that the Ashurbeylis could spend one month in Malta during November.

As a high net-worth individual, he also secured a face-to-face meeting with the chief executive of Bank of Valletta, which was to be used as his bank of choice. Ashurbeyli’s business group has a combined value of some €10 million.

When Identity Malta refused his application for citizenship, Ashurbeyli and his wife were refunded the money placed on deposit for the passports and the property, and their Malta companies were liquidated.

No explanation was given for the refusal, although it is possible that due diligence searches by Identity Malta, which is responsible for conferring IIP citizenship, flagged Ashurbeyli’s role in the Russian military-industrial complex.

Space nation

Ashurbeyli planned to buy this property in Malta

Just a year after the refusal, the Baku-born scientist launched a new initiative: space citizenship.

In 2016, he unveiled the “first nation state in space” – dubbed “Asgardia” after one of the mythical worlds inhabited by the Norse gods – with plans to obtain United Nations membership and also launch a satellite and open membership for its citizens… who would however have to remain with their feet firmly planted on Earth.

“Physically the citizens of that nation state will be on Earth; they will be living in different countries on Earth, so they will be a citizen of their own country and at the same time they will be citizens of Asgardia,” Ashurbeyli had told The Guardian.

“When the number of those applications goes above 100,000 we can officially apply to the UN for the status of state.”

Today there are over 178,000 members and head of state Ashurbeyli is also busy firing off decrees, such as establishing a Constitution. “I do believe that as soon as this country becomes a part of the UN family, citizenship of that country will be really quite prestigious,” he had said.

Frans von der Dunk, who studies space law at the University of Nebraska, was quoted saying by Popular Science that nothing in the Outer Space Treaty – the main legislation governing activity in space, whose goal is to make sure space remains “the province of all mankind” – would prevent this peaceful nation from forming.

“This may be the germ that 50 years from now will create a true nation in outer space,” von der Dunk says, “but I don’t see that happening overnight, or even in the next 10 or 20 years,” he says, owing to the fact that Asgardia does not actually have physical territory in Space.

But as Popular Science puts it, it is “rather difficult to say whether Asgardia is a sincere effort with poor execution, a marketing scheme, or an absurd joke.”

Military entrepreneur

The S-500 missile system

Ashurbeyli is a businessman and nanoscientist who founded the Vienna-based Aerospace International Research Centre and is currently chairman of Unesco’s Science of Space committee.

Ashurbeyli’s new companies, Socium-Malta and Socium-A, were set up with one of the Individual Investor Programme’s accredited agencies, Credence Corporate Advisory.

Until 2011, Ashurbeyli was head of Russia’s military-industrial corporation Almaz-Antey, a conglomerate of some 46 national military enterprises and the world’s 12th largest defence contractor, with arms sales of $8.3 billion.

Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is spearheading the design of Russia’s most advanced surface-to-air missiles – the S-500 Samoderzhets (‘autocrat’), also known as the Triumfator-M. The S-500 is a new generation missile intended at intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles, supplanting the S-400. With a range of 400km, the S-500 can destroy up to 10 ballistic missiles at 18,000km per hour – characteristics similar to the United States’ Patriot Advanced Capability 3 complex.

Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in1988 he created Socium, a computer software firm. Until recently, Socium had companies in Russia, Baku, Mauritius, Monaco and Corfu.

Since 2011, he has chaired the Russian Federation’s advisory board on aerospace defence.