Business visa trade opening UAE route for overstayers

Third-country nationals from Asia and the subcontinent are using business visas to secure entry into Malta, without any guarantee that they are able to finance a permanent stay on the island.

A government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, showed MaltaToday a list of third-country nationals who had companies set up for them in 2015 and 2016.

The company owners had acquired legally in the United Arab Emirates a 90-day business or long-stay visa for Malta.

The inexpensive visas however require ‘middle-men’ who liaise with Maltese corporate service providers. Such agents were said to take up to €10,000 to submit the business visa application, create a company in Malta through the corporate services provider, and then arrange the flights to Malta.

“We know this from statements made by these Asian ‘businessmen’ whose visa expired and then refused to return home to renew their visa,” the source said.

When the 90-day stay is up, visa overstayers refuse to return to their home country to renew their visa. “Some business visa holders even file asylum claims simply to win more time and stay in Malta,” the ministerial source said.

“Corporate service providers in Malta can open companies in just 48 hours. So these clients, usually Pakistani nationals, are pooling their family’s monies to raise the necessary capital to open a Maltese company and secure a visa.”

According to the list seen by MaltaToday, numerous companies are registered at various letterbox addresses – which this newspaper has verified – which do not house any business activities but are domestic residences. In some cases, the address is purely fictional: for example, a terraced house’s address gets an ‘apartment number’ added to it when this does not even exist.

Overstayers apply for asylum after entering through business visa

In Malta, the corporate service providers assist the agents in countries like the United Arab Emirates, a migratory hub for Asian workers, by suggesting that the applicants declare they are opening a subsidiary or branch of some parent company in their home country.

“The family that stumps up the €10,000 fee usually has some family business, so they can legally certify that the visa applicant wants to open a branch of the business in Malta – as long as the original company can be proven to have been in business for the past three years and provides a certificate of incorporation and three-year financials.”

Once they arrive in Malta, there are no checks on what business activities are being conducted – if any. “They will find some job and send the money back home, or if their visa allows, travel on to another Schengen country,” the source said.

In Dubai, the Maltese consulate uses outsourced partners such as VFS Global – a leading firm that serves 50 governments worldwide – to provide visa services to non-EU travellers.

The visa processing fees are not prohibitive at 480 dirhams (€118) but the process will require proof of a bona fide business set-up.

“This is where a Dubai ‘agent’ comes in, namely the middleman who has a corporate services contact in Malta to set up a company or issue a letter of invitation to the ‘business traveller’,” the source told MaltaToday.

The process is entirely legal and this newspaper has no smoking gun of any wrongdoing.

But the source who spoke to MaltaToday said that “a business visa traveller who refuses to go back to his home country to renew a visa and instead claim asylum” cannot be considered as a bona fide case.

In Dubai, the agent fixes these necessary arrangements for the business visa applicant which require being paid up-front: a hotel confirmation for the entire 90-day stay, the air tickets, a European health insurance policy with minimum coverage of €30,000, a letter of invitation from the Maltese corporate services provider – usually they are inviting such business visa applicants to attend conferences or ‘college’ courses, or even to set up a small business.

They also have to provide personal bank statements for the last six months, and proof of employment.

“The proof of employment is easily procured from a family member who is in business, to claim that they employ the applicant. The family member would have probably financed the visa application and travel in the first place,” the source said.

Adding more veracity to the application, long-stay visa travellers can set up a Maltese company at a corporate services provider’s address. The company they set up is then used as proof that they are coming to Malta on legal, employment purposes.

“Six months before applying for the business visa, a company is set up with minimum capital of some €1,500. The worker is director, sole shareholder, and secretary of the company. It is all above board,” the source said.

No checks on false letterboxes

In the past years it has become evident that identity fraud is easily committed in the absence of proper enforcement.

In 2015, MaltaToday found that a shuttered bar at 1, Marsa Road, in Marsa, was hosting 26 foreign nationals who submitted the derelict watering hole’s address as proof of their residence in Malta, yet no checks were apparently made by the identity card office to confirm the veracity of these claims.

Identity Malta said that 24 of these applications were submitted before January 2013 and insisted that “since the introduction of the National Identity Management System in 2013, no applications were registered under the mentioned address”.

The names seen by this newspaper included nationalities from the Horn of Africa, Sudan, Nigeria, and also Canada, all retrieved from a search that listed the Marsa address.

Hallowed ‘IIP’ not immune

In an examination of the registered addresses of those who acquired Maltese passports for €650,000 under the Invidiual Investor Programme, MaltaToday discovered that some applicants had been ‘housed’ inside holiday flats instead of purchasing a property worth at least €350,000 or renting a home for at least €16,000 annually for five years.

The requirement to acquire a property as well as invest €150,000 in government bonds, must be fulfilled within four months from when the Letter of Approval in Principle is issued by Identity Malta. 

“Identity Malta requires that a copy of the actual contract for purchase or lease of the property is provided,” Identity Malta CEO Jonathan Cardona told MaltaToday.

“A copy of the purchase note of the Malta Government Stock is also required. These submissions are done through the applicants’ agents who are responsible for handling the application and ensuring that it is in order.  Without these documents in hand the individual is not allowed to proceed with the application.”

But photos of the Naxxar maisonette where people like Chinese billionaire Liu Zhongtian is registered, easily prove the theory that humble properties are being used as letterbox addresses so that Zhongtian’s people in Malta would collect official mail.

Zhongtian, worth at least $2.8 billion, became the recipient of a voting document without even having lived for six months in Malta in the last 18 months.

Jonathan Cardona contested MaltaToday’s suggestion that Identity Malta has not been verifying IIP applicants’ property purchases. “All applicants, through their agents, provide a contract to Identity Malta of the property leased or bought. The application does not proceed unless Identity Malta is provided with a copy of a contract which meets the legal requirements.”