‘How Much Money Did You Make From Selling Passports?’ Jason Azzopardi Challenges Prime Minister
Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi has challenged Prime Minister Robert Abela to declare how much he personally profited off the sale-of-citizenship programme.
“How much money did the Prime Minister earn from the passport scheme?” Azzopardi said on NET TV’s Frontline last night. “Is he ready to publish the names of every Russian citizen who bought a Maltese passport and clarify how many of these purchased it through his office’s agency?”
“Let’s see how big his financial involvement was and then we can understand more clearly why he is prioritising his personal interests above the national interest.”
Prior to Abela’s election as Prime Minister, his wife Lydia Abela, a lawyer, was listed as an agent for the Individual Investor Program, giving her the right to process applications for potential citizens.
Several law firms, lawyers and financial advisory firms have also been approved as agents, along with the scheme’s concessionaire Henley and Partners.
Malta launched its original citizenship-by-investment scheme in 2013 but revamped it in 2020, only allowing applicants to apply for citizenship after one year of residence in the country against a €750,000 fee, or after three years if they pay €600,000.
The government has insisted due diligence procedures to vet applicants are among the strictest in the world.
However, the scheme is facing significant international pressure following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, given the high number of Russian nationals who purchased Maltese citizenship.
Yesterday an overwhelming 595 of 681 MEPs voted in favour of a ban on ‘golden passports’, with only 12 – including PL MEPs MEPs, Alfred Sant, Josianne Cutajar, Alex Agius Saliba and Cyrus Engerer – voting against it.
US Congressmen Burgess Owens and Steve Cohen also recently presented a bill to exclude countries which sell citizenship from the US visa waiver program.
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