Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1270964
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 JULY 2020 NEWS UK Residency Card Application Dates Identity Malta Agency will be reaching out to all potential beneficiaries who held a valid residence document on 1 st February 2020. Applicants would need to fill in the form and submit a copy of the documents requested to the Expatriates Unit in Valley Road, Msida on the dates indicated in the letter that they will be receiving (excluding public holidays). It is important to present this letter when applying for the new residency document. Applicants residing in Gozo should apply at the eResidence Unit in St. Francis Square, Victoria Gozo. Applicants will be issued with a 10 year residence document once the status is confirmed. 2 1 Applicants will be notified by post with the exact submission dates T: +356 2590 4000 W: www.identitymalta.com E: brexit.ima@govmt ZONE 11 October 2020 Naxxar, Għargħur ZONE 12 October 2020 Swieqi, Pembroke, Paceville ZONE 13 October 2020 Mosta, Attard, Imġarr ZONE 14 November 2020 Birkirkara, Balzan, Iklin, Lija ZONE 15 November 2020 Marsaskala, Fgura ZONE 8 03/08/2020 - 04/09/2020 St. Paul's Bay GOZO July - September 2020 Għajnsielem Għajnsielem Nadur ZONE 9 September 2020 Qormi, Siġġiewi, Luqa, Żebbuġ, Dingli, Imtarfa, Rabat, Mdina ZONE 10 September - October 2020 St. Julian's, Sliema - - - 07/08/2020 21/08/2020 04/09/2020 03/08/2020 18/08/2020 24/08/2020 with another Russian national and his remittance business in Malta. The two sources who spoke to MaltaToday attested that the story came "directly from Labour HQ" during the elec- tion. "It was pushed to as many newspapers as possible, and it seems IntelligenceOnline took the story. It wasn't a false sto- ry. It conflated a true story with real events of Russian meddling happening around Europe." Another clear case of Maltese provenance was an Observ- er report on 27 May 2017, in which a "source working with- in its information technology agency" was quoted as saying that the Maltese government's IT systems had seen a rise in attacks on its servers, "designed to damage the government". A confidential external risk assessment from MITA that was passed on to the newspaper by Labour government officials, identified the Fancy Bears – a hacking collective often asso- ciated with the Kremlin – as a prime suspect. The newspaper report echoed the line that the attacks came after Muscat's claims that "a foreign intelligence agency had suggested Malta would become a target for a Russian disinfor- mation campaign." Chelgate reaction Chelgate has disputed the EUobserver article, insisting that it never commissioned the Russian hit-job report from ei- ther Sandstone or anyone else, nor that it had advanced such allegations. "In fact, nobody at Chelgate was aware of its ex- istence until the publication of the libel. It appears to have been simply a research docu- ment submitted to Sandstone by a third party, and rejected by Sandstone that never passed it on to any third party." Chelgate's executive chair- man Terence Fane-Saunders – whom MaltaToday sources remember having met in Malta – later commented on his com- pany's website, that the EUob- server report raises the ques- tion of how and why the report found its way to this publica- tion, "and why Chelgate was targeted this way. A question that would have been interest- ing if it had not been quite so sinister". Fane-Saunders says Sand- stone knows who arranged the report's publication. "From what we have been able to gather, this was disin- formation, deliberately plant- ed as part of a rather messy propaganda scrap between at least three international inter- ests. Chelgate, it appears, was caught up in the crossfire," the Chelgate chairman said. The government is resisting FOI requests on the contract it gave to British reputation managers Chelgate, whose former representative in Malta had a desk at Castille to devise a public relations strategy for the Maltese government with the UK House of Commons committee on fake news. But former Castille insiders say it was in Castille at the time that Chelgate was assisting the OPM, that in 2018 the first whispers of a Russian hit-job on Daphne Caruana Galizia started making the rounds in the hope that it would catch on in the press