American billionaire Peter Thiel is reportedly pursuing Maltese citizenship, according to a report in the New York Times.
A prolific venture capitalist, Thiel co-founded the online payment company PayPal and was Facebook’s first outside investor. He is also a self-described conservative libertarian and has funded a number of Republican and right-wing politicians in the United States. Thiel also famously bankrolled a number of lawsuits that ultimately bankrupted online media company Gawker Media.
According to the New York Times, Thiel has an apartment in Valletta listed as an official address, which reporters said they also found listed as a vacation rental on Airbnb, despite Malta’s citizenship by investment scheme prohibiting prospective citizens from renting out their official residence while their passport application is still pending.
NYT also reported that Thiel has already made headway in developing business connections in Malta, with his husband Matt Danzeisen listed as a director of a Malta-based company. Thiel, they said, is also listed as a shareholder in other Maltese companies.
Since backing Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, the technology investor has become one of the largest individual donors in the mid-term elections next month, spending more than $30 million on more than a dozen right-wing Congressional candidates who have decried globalisation and pledged to put America first.
Malta’s citizenship by investment scheme, better known as a golden passport programme, has repeatedly come under fire from the EU, with the European Commission referring Malta to the Court of Justice of the European Union for selling passports.
Malta is the only EU state currently running such a scheme after both Bulgaria and Cyprus scrapped their passport programmes.
The Commission has said that it considers granting European citizenship to wealthy investors with no genuine link to the member state for a series of pre-determined payments as incompatible with the principle of sincere cooperation enshrined in the Treaty on European Union, and with the concept of Union citizenship. Malta disputes this and insists that it is correct in its interpretation of EU treaties.
The Commission has urged Malta to end its investor citizenship scheme in a letter of formal notice sent in 2020 and again in 2021 following the introduction of a new scheme.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Malta suspended passport sales to Russian and Belarusian nationals, which the Commission observed as a “positive step”.
The Maltese government has repeatedly dug its heels on the issue and maintains that the issue of citizenship is a matter of national competence, firm in its belief that it is not violating any EU treaties.
Earlier this year, two US congressmen introduced a bill that seeks to ban nations that run golden passport schemes from the US visa waiver program.
Malta is one of 40 countries that benefit from the programme, which allows people to travel to the US for 90 days or less without having to apply for a visa.