Thread by @fascinatorfun

Along with old charms & new construction, Malta is earning a reputation for rampant corruption & dubious dealings
Then there's the matter of the assassination of a journalist-Daphne Caruana Galizia-whose revelations cut a little too close to power. cbsnews.com/news/inside-th…

2/ But since taking over in 2013, the current government has sought to refashion the country as a mecca for emerging and complex technologies like cryptocurrency and blockchain. The 44-year-old prime minister, Joseph Muscat, is the high priest of this new gospel..

3/. Who buys the passports?

Manuel Delia: Russian tycoons, Chinese tycoons, Saudi tycoons, Nigerian tycoons.

(Let’s not forget Channing - Gazprom/Legatum.
Ashcroft promoting it)

4/. For Manuel Delia, an online journalist and longtime critic of the current government, the program estimated to have brought in almost a billion dollars, is essentially a Trojan horse, allowing those with dubious aims to breach Europe's borders.

5/.

Why would they want a Maltese passport?

Manuel Delia: Because they want to go in the rest of the world, hiding where they're really from. Maltese passports give them not only free movement for themselves through European airports,....

6/. ... but it gives their money, their capital free movement throughout Europe.
Q: And free movement to the United States
You've got that Maltese passport validated by the EU, you go right through US passport control?
A: Visa-free. Absolutely. So, that's a big reason to have it.

7/ Applicants to the "golden passport program," ..are supposed to show that they've established residence in Malta for at least a year, but when..checked the listed address for a Russian tycoon it led to a modest suburb & rundown basement apartment that had been divided in two.

8/. Q: let's just call this what it is. This-- this is a fraud.

A-Manuel Delia- : It is a fraud. It's a fraud. What-- what's worse, it's perpetrated by the state. It's not just sanctioned by the state.

9/. EU investigations led to the shut down of the small Maltese Pilatus Bank

Here is a link to the back story including about its Iranian owner and chairman, Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, now indicted in the US for money laundering.

theguardian.com/world/2018/nov…

10/. According to the indictment, filed in New York, Sadr participated in a scheme to illegally funnel $115m (£88m) in payments for a Venezuelan construction project to Iranian individuals and companies. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

11/.

Pilatus had been set to open an office in London’s Mayfair in April 2017. The Maltese regulator had granted it a passport to operate in in the UK but it was never given permission to offer accounts to UK residents.

12/

The bank, which reported €308m (£270m) of assets in 2016, was known to have held accounts for a senior official in the government of the Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat, and members of Azerbaijan’s ruling family.

13/.

And @Turloughc has very conveniently come on line to help provide the onward link from Schrembi, Muscat’s Chief of Staff, Kevin Bonici (Mueller Inquiry) and Farage who must be waiting nervously in the wings for the other shoe to drop.

14/. As Daphne chronicled, Schembri (the most powerful man in the Maltese government) is alleged to have taken kickbacks for brokering Malta's billion-dollar national energy deal; and for taking payoffs to help Russian millionaires snag those coveted Maltese passports.
He's