Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have something in common; Malta raises the price of citizenship
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MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS
There has always been a cliffhanger built into Malta’s Individual Investor Program — the scheme it created in 2014 to sell European Union passports to anyone who passes the checks it says it imposes. The cliffhanger was this: only 1,800 golden passports could be sold. It was an exclusive club, when all of those 1,800 lucky families had signed up, applications would be closed. Forever.
This raised an interesting philosophical question: the investor program is basically free money. Malta has been earning money from selling successful applicants the right to live — almost invariably — somewhere else in the EU. All of the benefits accrued to the Mediterranean island country, and yet it had to face none of the potential downsides caused when very wealthy oligarchs start moving into a neighborhood.
When the program’s built-in cap was reached, would Malta walk away from all of this free money, amounting to some 50 million euros a year? Decision time is now upon us. At the end of this month, the program will close. If you want to grab one of the handful of places remaining, you have 28 days left.