Other countries could end up buying Maltese passports for their secret agents - Azzopardi

Some countries could end up buying Maltese passports for their secret agents, Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi said this evening.

Speaking in Parliament during the Budget debate on the Ministry of Home Affairs, Dr Azzopardi said the former government did sometimes receive requests from other countries to issue passports for their nationals, who were secret agents. That would have enabled them to go around in certain countries without raising suspicion. The requests were always turned down.

But it would now be easy for some countries to fork out €650,000 to enable their citizens to buy Maltese passports and then use them for their secret activities, Dr Azzopardi told parliament.

He was sure that these countries were able to present their nationals as 'clean' for the due diligence process when they applied for a Maltese passport, he said. But how would Malta look if these people were then found to have used their Maltese passport for espionage?

Dr Azzopardi also hit out at AFM promotions, particularly the way how four majors were rapidly promoted to colonels in breach of legal requirements.

He said that security clearance by the Security Service in terms of EU rules should have included a trawl of their financial status to ensure that they had not been subjected to certain pressures, yet no such request for information had been made by the Security Service to the banks, Dr Azzopardi said. 

MINISTER URGED TO FACILITATE THE WORK OF NGOS AMONG MIGRANTS

During the same parliamentary sitting, Nationalist MP Claudette Buttigieg strongly urged minister Manuel Mallia to facilitate the work of NGOs, particularly those who helped immigrants.

"These NGOs want nothing for themselves but to be able to help others," she said.

She also called for an educational campaign against racism, assistance for the integration of third country nationals and action to stop the exploitation of the migrants.