Individual Investor Programme: ‘Publishing golden passport citizens is discriminatory’ says Identity Malta

The agency responsible for the sale of Maltese citizenship is refusing to give MaltaToday a list of citizens who acquired a passport through the Individual Investor Programme.

Identity Malta turned down MaltaToday’s freedom of information request, saying that the information requested was already publicly available. “Identity Malta Agency cannot discriminate between citizens of Malta as requested by the applicant.”

MaltaToday filed a complaint, arguing that citizenship laws do not directly prohibit the separate publication of a list of ‘IIP citizens’ and that this was only a matter of policy.

“The IIP itself is a scheme built on discrimination… it discriminates between future citizens who can acquire citizenship through naturalisation or by acquiring registration through the IIP. Identity Malta is itself promoting a discriminatory route to Maltese citizenship; arguing that a separate list would discriminate between IIP and non-IIP citizens is a smokescreen,” MaltaToday said in its complaint to the agency.

“The ‘discrimination’ is essential and has a public interest because the investment of so called ‘IIP citizens’ is directly linked to the reputation of the country and its economic growth.”

But Identity Malta also refused this complaint, saying that citizenship rules mandated the sole publication of a single list of all persons. “Publishing lists of sub-categories of new citizens by reference to the method of acquisition of citizenship would violate the principle that all citizens are equal and have a right to be treated equally by the State,” Identity Malta said.

IDM also insisted that all citizens were equal after having acquired citizenship, and that the discrimination in the acquisition of citizenship was no longer relevant at that point.

“The request refers to the post-acquisition stage and the method of acquisition (except for the fact of falling into the categories of citizenship by registration on naturalisation) is therefore no longer relevant at that stage.”

MaltaToday will be appealing the refusal with the Information and Data Protection Commissioner.

IDM has also refused to give a breakdown of all the accredited agencies that had successfully sold the Individual Investor Programme.

Malta’s IIP has 154 agents promoting and selling citizenship to the global elite for €650,000 a passport. Applicants must also commit to acquire a property worth €350,000 or rent an apartment for five years for at least €16,000 per annum, and invest €150,000 in government stocks.

No data, however, is publicly available about which of these agencies were successful at promoting their clients, who must pass through a due diligence exercise before being finally accepted as citizens by Identity Malta.

In its refusal, Identity Malta insisted that the information requested was confidential commercial information “in view of the reasonably predictable, substantially adverse effects on the financial and property interests of the Government and… insofar as the information requested could reasonably be expected to have a substantial adverse effect on the proper and efficient conduct of the operations of a public authority and the public interest that is served by non-disclosure outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”

The regulator for the IIP, an independent officer who reviews annual data on the sale of citizenships, already publishes information on how many successful applications take place, as well as the geographical distribution of the applications.

In 2016, a MaltaToday story on the residential properties of successful IIP citizens not being worth €350,000, led to the creation of a compliance unit at Identity Malta to investigate potential abuses.

In an investigation carried out by the regulator of the IIP, it turned out that in the 13 cases selected by MaltaToday, 11 had leased their premises and in six of these cases the lease value was “nearly equal to the threshold” save for a €200 difference.

The regulator said this statistic implied the figure had been rounded upwards so that the rental would be in line with the IIP rules, or that the applicants had specifically selected a property that did not significantly exceed the minimum €16,000 threshold.

Identity Malta started to request accredited agents to provide a qualified architect’s declaration to confirm the values of the properties being leased and purchased; and has set up a Compliance Unit tasked with monitoring and investigating potential abuses.