Passport-buyers’ ‘genuine links’ to Malta? A couple of weekends a year

After multiple revisions of a controversial law, the government is adamant that its citizenship-by-investment programme only provides Maltese nationality to people who establish a genuine link to the country.

But there may be hundreds of thousands of tourists in any given year who establish stronger links to Malta than many applicants who will be becoming Maltese nationals in short order, for a price.

The experience of a reader who has leased a property to a real estate company so that an Eastern European man can obtain Maltese citizenship through the Individual Investor Programme, shows just how cynically the issue is actually dealt with.

While claimed residence in this property could ostensibly be used to provide Maltese citizenship to the lessee, the spouse, parents and children, its owner was advised to send a housekeeper to the property every few months to maintain the site.

The owner was told that the man would only use the property “for a couple of weekends every year,” which is apparently enough to meet the poorly-defined “proof of residence in Malta” requirement in the regulations governing the citizenship scheme.

And the real estate company in question is arguably the one which is most linked to the IIP: Henley Estates, a part of the Henley and Partners Group which was made the programme’s “concessionaire.”

But the citizenship scheme had only received approval by the European Commission when it was satisfied that amendments to the law meant that applicants would have to be “effective residents” of Malta for 12 months before they are granted Maltese and EU citizenship.

The government had clarified that “effective residency” did not mean spending 365 days in Malta, but it is equally clear that a couple of weekends per year is stretching the definition a bit too far.

It was reported that the agreement between the government and the Commission was based on spending at least 183 days – half a year – in Malta, which reflects international tax residency requirements and reflects the conditions set out in the Malta Global Residence Programme, which aims to attract wealthy individuals to Malta through a favourable tax regime.

This claim was neither officially confirmed nor denied, but at least Henley Estates clearly has a different impression of what it takes to be an effective resident of Malta.

The case does appear to reflect concerns raised by Canadian immigration consultant Nuri Katz – who is highly critical of the way the scheme was designed, and of the unprecedented role granted to a private concessionaire – in comments he made to The Malta Independent on Sunday earlier this year.

Mr Katz had suggested that the vague requirements were liable to abuse. Recalling that Identity Malta head Jonathan Cardona was quoted as saying that a functional address and circumstantial evidence such as yacht club memberships would suffice, he argued that he could easily buy yacht club memberships in bulk for his clients.

Presumably, they could also be helped to rent apartments they will barely use, but which provide them with the freedom to live and work throughout the EU which Maltese nationals – as EU citizens – enjoy.

As far as the reader’s property is concerned, of course, there is little to complain about: the rent – just over the €16,000 annual minimum set by the regulations – reflects market rates, and largely-absent tenants are unlikely to be a nuisance.

And the use of the property is also with the consent of the owner: cases of suspected address theft by would-be Maltese citizens and residents were revealed some weeks ago. In an incident reported by the Times of Malta, a letter informing a foreign man that he had been granted a residency card was sent to his purported address: the second home of a Maltese woman.