Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/361046
Newspaper post YOUR FIRST READ AND FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT CONTINUES PAGE 7 INTERVIEW • 12-13 Café Premier director was paid €210,000 as 'debt' for reaching €4.2 million deal SUNDAY • 10 AUGUST 2014 • ISSUE 770 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY IIP citizens bring in €130 million No sick leave for sports injuries? Get stuffed! APPLICATIONS for Maltese citi- zenship under the Individual In- vestor Programme number over 200 and most of the applications do not face any serious objection, MaltaToday has learned. The applicants are mostly Rus- sian, but applications hail from over 70 countries. All applicants made the rel- evant deposits and in some cases the agents, which include many leading Maltese legal firms, have already been paid a €70,000 fee upfront. With most of the applicants believed to be headed for Mal- tese citizen- ship, it would mean that the government would have raked in at least €130 m i l l i o n , w h i c h is €100 million more than estimated by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat for the first year alone. Legal firms could theoretically and cumulatively have earned €14 million. It is unclear how much Henley and Partners, the IIP's concessionaires, will be earning for each citizen accepted. Government sources were tight- lipped on further details apart from saying that they were over- whelmed by the interest in the scheme. Investors who make a minimum contribution of €650,000 (plus €25,000 each for any spouse or minor child) will be granted Mal- tese citizenship, provided they meet due diligence criteria and pass a criminal background check. Apart from having had to pur- chase a property worth at least €350,000, or to rent a property for €16,000 a month, the third require- ment – purchasing €150,000 in financial instruments – would mean a cumulative impact of €30 million in such investments. The new citizens' Maltese passport will give them full voting rights on the island and free access to the border- free Schengen area inside the EU. Muscat estimated a con- servative €30 million would be generated in the first year of the IIP, the programme devised by the Labour government to cre- ate a posterity fund that would fi- nance government capital spend- ing in health, education, and social spending. Over 200 applications for 'golden passport' IT'S GOURMET SUNDAY Employers Association has the wrong end of the stick say MDs PG 16 €1.20 maltatoday PHOTO BY RAY ATTARD Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino: 'In 20 years as a judge, I've never been accused of political bias' MATTHEW VELLA ONE of the shareholders in the Café Premier 'bailout' was paid €210,000 by constituting himself as a credi- tor – much to the chagrin of another shareholder – after the arrangement was secured to vacate the government property in the heart of Valletta. The acrimonious split between the director-shareholders of Cities En- tertainment Ltd was laid bare in an investigation by the police's economic crimes unit into suggestions by Na- tionalist MP Jason Azzopardi as to whether "commissions" had been paid to secure the €4.2 million deal to re- scind Cities Entertainment's 65-year lease on the government property. Details of the investigation – which MaltaToday has seen – concluded that there was no evidence of any criminal act or underhand payments. It was director Neville Curmi who suggested to police that his former business partner, Mario Camilleri, was paid €210,000 from the final price as a brokerage fee – something vehe- mently denied by Camilleri, who told police this was money owed to him by the company. The €210,000 was eventually paid by Cities Entertainment Ltd to its own shareholder, M&A Investments. Both directors denied paying any commissions to reach the deal, while MP Jason Azzopardi said that he had only asked – in a comment he had given to MaltaToday – whether any consultants in the deal had been paid "commissions" for their work; al- though he said he had no information to suggest that something criminal had taken place. The police investigation stopped at the allegations, but did not follow the trail of the €210,000 debt claimed in the final payout. The story of the €4.2 million deal was revealed by MaltaToday after it turned out that Cities Entertainment had been called to pay outstanding debts to the Lands Department back in late 2012. UNJONI EWROPEA MALTA PASSAPORT No evidence of anything criminal – police investigation YOUR FIRST READ AND FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT No sick leave for sports injuries? Get stuffed! Employers Association has the wrong end of the stick say MDs FREE! YOUR COPY OF GOURMET TODAY MAGAZINE WITH MALTATODAY