[WATCH] Passport buyers: 2015 citizens’ list not yet published

Minister vows to publish overdue 2015 citizenship list

Justice minister Owen Bonnici said he would be publishing the list of naturalised citizens, even though the 2015 list has not yet been published six months since the end of the year.

The list of new registered and naturalised citizens has acquired renewed importance since the Labour government introduced the Individual Investor Programme, which sells Maltese citizenship to the global rich for €650,000.

“We have no particular interest in not publishing the list,” Bonnici said. “We’re ready to fulfil out constitutional obligations. It is the IIP regulator’s job to monitor the IIP and table his report in parliament. If there was a problem I’m sure it would be something the regulator would flag.”

Bonnici has not committed himself to a timeframe for publication or to provide the list according to beneficiaries’ surnames, listed in alphabetical order. In 2014, the first list was published with the first names, not surnames, in alphabetical order, making it harder to scrutinise which families could have purchased Maltese citizenship.

Bonnici also said that Identity Malta had aligned itself with the requirements of the law to furnish the Electoral Commission with the latest list of registered and naturalised citizens, after a complaint from chairman Joe Church in which he said that IDM was not forwarding the list in a timely manner.

Church said in a letter to Identity Malta’s executive chairman Joe Vella Bonnici that Identity Malta, which is also responsible for the Individual Investor Programme that sells Maltese citizenship for €650,000, was not providing his office with monthly lists of registered citizens and naturalised citizens.

“It is of utmost importance that such lists are submitted on a regular basis in conformity with provisions of the law,” Church wrote earlier this week. “The last monthly lists supplied to this office were for August 2014 (registration) and for December 2014 (naturalisation).”

Identity Malta is responsible to forward to the Electoral Commission within the first five days of each month a list containing the name, surname and ID number of any person granted citizenship.

The PN has filed 91 cases against the Electoral Commission, in order to delete new citizens who acquired their citizenship under the IIP from the electoral register, without having spent a minimum of six months in Malta over the past 18 months before the publication of the register.

It appears that representatives for the IIP citizens have ticked ‘yes’ when asked whether they are ‘aged over 16 and always have been a resident of Malta’. The Electoral Commission has failed to verify whether they even satisfy residence requirements to be able to vote.

The Maltese Citizenship Act, amended since the introduction of the IIP, no longer binds the government to publish the names of all naturalised citizens every three months in the Government Gazette.

That important clause, which guaranteed some form of transparency on citizenship, was expunged and a new legal notice says the minister has to publish an annual list of all those granted Maltese citizenship by registration or naturalization, including those persons who were granted Maltese citizenship under the programme.