Follow this update (which you can watch with English subtitles and without the need of watching the first film) that highlights the flimsy legal basis that Malta’s government has used and continues to use to flog our citizenship to financial criminals and tax dodgers.
The story revolves around “the Passport Professor” Dimitri Kochenov from the Netherlands. The film tells the story of how Peter Grech hired Dimitri Kochenov to argue to the European Commission, to the Maltese public and to potential buyers of Maltese citizenship that this was all kosher.
Now Dimitri Kochenov has been quietly forced to resign from his university. The film interviews colleagues of Kochenov teaching law in Groningen. They say no university professor should be “corruptible”. No one should involve themselves in such shady activities.
Of course, as you can see in this film, Malta made selling passports its flagship activity.
I watched this film this morning. I’ve been working on this story for over 3 years now and there are few details I had not already read or written about. What remains incredible to me is that though a lot appears to have changed since this story was hot, much remains the same.
Peter Grech retired. Dimitri Kochenov is being pushed out of his university. Joseph Muscat resigned in disgrace. Keith Schembri has been indicted. Christian Kaelin continues to make millions but has vanished from the local scene. Marie Louise Coleiro Preca speaks of the need for her party to apologise to the public.
And yet Malta still sells passports. It is still fighting a challenge from the European Commission that this activity is illegal. It still wants to continue making money harbouring crooks and sheltering tax dodgers.
It is not just to people who voted for the Labour Party that the Labour Party should apologise. It owes, on our behalf, an apology to the rest of the world.
Was there ever any doubt all the talk of an apology is insincere?