Repubblika refers to the reporting that appeared in the Times of Malta today about a person who purchased Maltese citizenship and used it as a tool for organised crime on a global scale.
This is another episode in a long series that shows that we are selling our citizenship to people who want nothing more from Malta than to help them hide their criminal intentions and activities. In doing so we seek the money we earn and ignore the victims of organised crime from around the world.
The Maltese government is satisfied that the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice agreed that it is not a European competence to interfere with whom Malta makes citizens. And the Maltese government anticipates that the European Court of Justice will ratify this view.
The fact that citizenship is within the competence of the Maltese government does not mean that selling citizenship to people who have nothing to do with Malta is a good thing. We reiterate as we have always done that it is our view that selling citizenship denatures citizenship itself. Instead of belonging to a republic and to a community of obligations and rights, our government has made our citizenship something that is sold and bought to and from whoever wants to use it to steal, deceive and hide the money they have stolen.
We reiterate our appeal that the sale of Maltese citizenship should stop once and for all.