Wealthy Americans have become increasingly interested in acquiring foreign citizenship, including from Malta, according to a USA wealth report by former citizenship concessionaires Henley & Partners.
Henley’s managing partner, Mehdi Kadiri, says in the report that the most sought-after options in Europe by Americans are the residence programme in Portugal followed by the citizenship scheme in Malta.
Kadiri said Henley & Partners received the most enquiries from US citizens on record in 2022, a 447 per cent increase from 2019.
The Maltese government has so far shirked pressure by the EU to terminate the scheme, despite being the last-remaining EU country to sell passports.
In September, the European Commission referred Malta to the EU Court of Justice, citing concerns that the continued sale of EU passports poses security, money-laundering, tax evasion and corruption risks.
Last week, Portugal announced that it will be ending its golden visas scheme.
A total of 1,532 main applicants have become Maltese citizens under the scheme, according to figures tabled in parliament by Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri this month.
The figures do not include relatives and dependents.
While declining to give a breakdown of the countries where the applicants came from, Camilleri said the applicants hailed from Asia, Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, the Gulf, Africa, Oceana and the Caribbean.
Malta suspended sales of passports to wealthy Russians and Belarussians in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
A 2021 data leak from Henley & Partners exposed how Maltese passport buyers would only spend an average of 16 days during their mandatory one-year residency period.
The documents raise serious questions about the “genuine link” requirement introduced as part of the scheme.
They reveal how wealthy applicants could reduce the time they had to spend in Malta by joining a local club, donating to charity, buying a yacht or taking up a newspaper subscription.
In some instances, passport applicants flew in and out of Malta within 24 hours of swearing an oath of allegiance to the country, its constitution and its people.
The government has insisted that it has since tightened up the residency requirements linked to the eventual granting of citizenship.