The following are the top stories in Malta s newspapers on Sunday.
The Sunday Times of Malta reports that a charity chaired by then prime minister Joseph Muscat’s wife received an endorsement from Henley & Partners as the go-to place for passport buyers’ donations. The newspaper also reports that Charles Azzopardi, former Labour mayor of Rabat, intends to contest the general election as a PN candidate.
The Malta Independent on Sunday says Henley and Partners had named Alex Muscat as their contact person at Castille for the sale of passports. It also quotes the health minister warning that Malta cannot afford to lose the gains it has made in fighting COVID-19.
Pastizzi from Serkin, Red Bull from Havana: the genuine links of the IIP
IIP applicants bought their way through low-value options to prove genuineness, using parking tickets and receipts from Serkin and Havana
25 April 2021, 7:00am
by Nicole Meilak
Receipts for Pastizzi from Rabat’s famous Crystal Palace Bar and for a Red Bull from a nightclub in Paceville were amongst the so-called “genuine links” presented by IIP candidates in order to prove the ties they had developed to Malta as they sought to get their hands on a passport.
Applicants for the Individual Investor Programm – Malta’s €1.15 million cash-for-passports scheme for the global rich – allowed them to spend just an average of 16 days in Malta out of their supposed 12-month residency period. The system was put in place by Henley & Partners, the IIP’s ‘concessionaire’ and the government agency Identity Malta, which effectively reduced the residency process to a box-ticking and score-gr