Justice Minister Owen Bonnici on Tuesday rebuffed calls to suspend the Citizenship by Investment Programme and also insisted that Malta "does not sell passports".

The minister was replying to questions in Parliament by Opposition leader Adrian Delia and shadow home affairs minister Beppe Fenech Adami.

Their questions came one day after EU Commission vice-president designate Vera Jourova told MEPs that she wanted cash-for-passport schemes banned across the EU.

Dr Fenech Adami asked Dr Bonnici what policies and guidelines existed for law firms to advertise their services from government offices, after a law firm was shown on video advertising its services from the Auberge de Castille.

In his reply, Dr Bonnici noted that Dr Fenech Adami had spoken of the sale of passports. Malta, he said, does not sell passports. What Malta does is to give citizenship to foreigners in terms of the Citizenship by Investment Programme, based around a due diligence programme which had been praised by the European Union.

The idea that people could queue up, pay money and get a passport was wrong.

He also pointed out that he was responsible for justice but not for law firms, although he attended the opening of legal offices when invited to do so.  

Dr Delia insisted that the so-called scheme was nothing more than the sale of passports. The price was fixed and this scheme did not fall within the definition of investment, which involved risk and return without guarantees.

He asked, in view of the recent programme aired by a French TV station, whether the government had weighed the pros and cons of this "very dirty scheme".

Had the ministry considered suspending the scheme in view of the reputational damage it was causing Malta? 

Dr Bonnici again insisted this was not an outright sale of passports. He added that he was confused by the PN position. It had originally been strongly against the scheme, but in the last general election it did not promise to revoke it.

In the wake of the French TV programme, the necessary investigations were being carried out by the Regulator and other authorities including also the Chamber of Advocates. The system, therefore, was working.

The answer into whether the scheme would be suspended therefore lay in the PN electoral programme, which had not promised to revoke it, he said.