Comodini Cachia joins official agent of citizenship programme

A legal firm that recently became an agent for the Individual Investor Programme includes newly-elected Nationalist MEP Therese Comodini Cachia, Sunday newspaper Illum reports.

According to Illum, Comodini Cachia not only represents a company that is protesting government’s choice of the IIP concessionaire but now forms part of a company that is an IIP agent. Comodini Cachia formed part of the legal team representing Arton Capital - a financial advisory company that is challenging government over its choice of Henley & Partners as IIP concessionaires.

Arton Capital was originally represented by Nationalist MP Francis Zammit Dimech's legal firm.

Comodini Cachia has now joined Saga Juris, a legal firm actively promoting the IIP. According to Illum, Comodini Cachia’s husband, Vladimiro Comodini, is a partner in another firm that is also promoting the citizenship programme.

Likewise, the PN’s president of the executive committee – Ann Fenech – forms part of a legal firm that acts as an IIP agent. Fenech had in the past dismissed suggestions that her law firm’s commercial interest in the Individual Investor Programme conflicts with her public declarations against the sale of Maltese citizenship.

Her legal firm, Fenech & Fenech Advocates, was granted a licence to act as an introducer of potential applicants for naturalisation.

“Fenech and Fenech Advocates is a large organisation specialising in a vast number of areas,” Fenech told MaltaToday when asked about her firm’s commercial interest in the sale of citizenship. The person handling the IIP account is another partner of Fenech and Fenech.


“As it happens, I myself am not involved at all because as everyone is aware my area of work is the maritime sector,” Fenech said.

While Henley & Partners are still officially the concessionaire of the IIP, under changes to the citizenship programme other businesses and accredited persons can introduce potential applicants to the IIP.

Identity Malta can licence “accredited persons” who can then submit prospective IIP applications. Accredited persons must be employees or directors of authorized registered mandatory (ARM) companies, and have to pay a €1,500 application fee for their licence and an annual €1,500 renewal fee.

They must also provide a professional indemnity cover of €1 million, have a recognised professional qualification, and have access to online due diligence databases.
Individuals which during the first year of their accreditation present three applications that are successful, will be entitled to become accredited persons on a three-year basis and charged a reduced renewal fee of €1,000 per year.

Applicants for Maltese citizenship not only have to pay €650,000 and buy a €350,000 property acquisition and €150,000 in financial bonds: they also pay processing fees of at least €7,500, apart from fees payable to the legal firm that carries out due diligence clearance for them.

Read more in today's issue of Illum