Alfred Sant: government would do well to phase out golden passports scheme

  A new government would “do well” to phase out the passports scheme, according to MEP Alfred Sant. In a Times of Malta opinion piece, the former Labour prime minister said the passports programme had attracted “too much opprobrium”, although not necessarily for the right reason. Earlier this month, Sant was among the four Labour MEPs who voted against a European Parliament motion calling for a ban on such citizenship schemes. They were the only members of the socialist parliamentary group to do so. Sant dismissed any link between the FATF greylisting and the passports scheme. “The PN opposition and others have tried to pin the reason for it on the passport for investment programme,” he says. “But the greylisting has been activated not because of the passports programme but because there is little trust in how Malta has been running financial services and gaming – both launched under Nationalist administrations. “If eventually they come under EU regulation, they could end up like agriculture and manufacturing,” Sant argues.  He says that declines in these sectors will not be easy to counter and new areas of economic initiative will need to be identified. In the same sentence,...