Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/794736
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 MARCH 2017 News MATTHEW VELLA APPLICANTS of the Individual Investor Programme – Malta's €1.15 million passport scheme – risk being reported to the police if addresses supplied by their agents to Identity Malta, do not correspond to their real, physi- cal address. Justice minister Owen Bonnici said in parliament that the abu- sive use of properties and their addresses for IIP applicants can be reported to the police and Identity Malta, risking the re- fusal of the application for the acquisition of a Maltese pass- port. Bonnici said a new Address Management System that Iden- tity Malta had introduced in 2016 had made it harder for any- one to register for a residence permit under a bogus address, or an address which belonged to someone else. In 2016, Identity Malta set up a compliance unit to inves- tigate potential abuses after a MaltaToday investigation found properties registered to new citi- zens appeared to fall below the threshold of prices. MaltaToday's story – "Let- terbox millionaires – Not all Malta's golden passport buyers are buying €350,000 property" – made reference to a number of IIP citizens whose properties were clearly not falling either within the €350,000 acquisition mark or the €16,000 annual lease value. In an investigation car- ried out by the Regulator of the IIP, it turned out that in the 13 cases se- lected by MaltaToday, 11 had leased their premises and in six of these cases the lease value was "near- ly equal to the threshold" save for a €200 differ- ence. The regulator said this statistic implied the figure had been rounded upwards so that the rental would be in line with the IIP rules, or that the appli- cants had specifically selected a property that did not signifi- cantly exceed the mini- mum €16,000 threshold. Subsequently to Malta- Today's report, Identity Malta started to request accredited agents to pro- vide a qualified architect's declaration to confirm the values of the proper- ties being leased and pur- chased; and has set up a Compliance Unit tasked with monitoring and in- vestigating potential abuses. The agents contacted by the IIP regulator even admitted that some of the properties pur- chased or leased by their clients might actually cost less, because there were not enough proper- ties on the market to be leased out at €1,350 per month and so they were pushing up the prices of places that cost less. "They re- marked that if a client was will- ing to pay more for a property whose value is less, why were they (the agents) obliged to in- tervene?" But the regulator noted that this assertion was incorrect, finding 2,152 properties on the online database of one of the main estate agents being leased at €1,000-€1,500. Bogus IIP addresses can be reported to police In 2016, Identity Malta set up a compliance unit to investigate potential abuses after a MaltaToday investigation found properties registered to new citizens appeared to fall below the threshold of prices Malta's IIP scheme • €650,000 payment • €115,000 acquisition of approved stocks and bonds • €350,000 minimum for property acquisition or five-year lease on property at €15,000 per annum