Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has announced that €5 million generated from the sale-of-citizenship scheme will be donated to Puttinu Cares for the construction of new apartments for cancer patients in central London. 

“While treatment in Malta is improving, we still need to send some Maltese patients to London for specialised treatment and we will continue doing so even though it costs the government hundreds of thousands of euro,” Muscat said during a phone-in from Australia on tonight’s annual Puttinu Cares fundraiser on Xarabank. “It is obvious that Puttinu needs more apartments to cater for these patients and we want this project to start as soon as possible, ideally before the end of the year.”

Muscat’s spokesperson Kurt Farrugia said on Twitter that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri had an “important role” in seeing this deal through. 

The National Development and Social Fund, which administers Malta’s revenue from the Individual Investor Programme revenue, will therefore donate €5 million to this cause – over and above the record €1.6 million that was donated by the public tonight. It is still a relative drop in the ocean for the fund, which generated over €360 million by the end of last year.

Muscat’s announcement comes a day after Malta registered a record surplus of €182.7 million for 2017, a massive increase of 1,959% when compared with the previous year. 

Has this announcement changed your view of the sale-of-citizenship scheme in any way? 

READ NEXT: Activists Have Witty Response To Government’s Maltese Passport Scheme Survey

Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]