Malta has begun the process of asking various international gangsters, spies and corrupt government officials to give back the passports it sold to them.
The country’s so-called citizenship by investment program is under the spotlight once again, after the EU announced yesterday it had initiated legal action against Malta and Cyprus. The EU said that such programs undermined the essence of EU citizenship, and are exploited by money launderers.
In response, Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri today announced that Malta had already started asking for the return of the passports it had sold.
“Never in a million years could we have imagined that people who bought Maltese citizenship would use their new passports for nefarious purposes. But because the EU is being all annoying about this, we’ve sent polite yet strongly worded letters to several people from China, Russia and elsewhere who maybe possibly are mobsters, intelligence officers and corrupt officials, asking if they could please return their passports to us at their earliest convenience,” he said.
Camilleri said the letters had been sent to various addresses in Malta.
“Unfortunately most of the people who bought Maltese passports before the rules changed earlier this year don’t actually live here, and it turns out shady individuals are hard to find, so…oh well,” the minister said.
“In one particular case, we did manage to track down an individual who it turns out has links with the Russian mafia. But instead of his passport, he sent back a dead rat and a bullet, which was frankly not very nice of him.”
