Profile

Jordanian businessman Yusuf M. Fathi Yusuf Khalaf – who also holds a Saint Kitts & Nevis passport bought with the help of Henley & Partners – applied for Maltese citizenship for himself, his wife and several dependents. Mr Khalaf is a majority shareholder in and the chairman of Al Raha Group for Technical Services (RGTS), a supplier of military equipment to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Residency and the right to vote

All members of the family were added to the electoral register in Malta, giving them the right to vote in general elections as well as polls to elect members of the European Parliament. Malta's opposition political party filed a lawsuit to have the entire family struck off the register on the grounds that none of the members had ever lived in Malta. According to filings they made in that case, every member of the family declared that they did not object to having their names struck off — effectively an admission that they had not physically resided in Malta before obtaining a Maltese passport.

To qualify for citizenship, the family leased an apartment in a two-storey building in the suburb of Naxxar with a lighting shop on the ground floor and the offices of a financial services company on another floor. A Malta Today article from 2016 commented that “this is hardly a property zone for €350,000 apartments”.

Untouched buffet of investment opportunities

The Khalaf family were given an à la carte list of potential investments. An RGTS briefing note dated March 2015 and seen by the Passport Papers collaboration states that the company “was the first to receive a land allocation briefing which the Prime Minister [Joseph Muscat] approved a week before […] tenders will be announced in 2015 for several areas of brownfield airport development […] this land has been granted to Malta Enterprise for aviation cluster development.”

Joe Vella Bonnici, then Executive Chairman of Identity Malta, the state authority that handled citizenship, appears to have operated as a business fixer for RGTS, introducing the company to a business conglomerate owned by a Maltese family. According to RGTS' briefing note, consultancy firm Grant Thornton presented RGTS with a “strategic investment opportunity overview” of projects for which a public call for tenders had not yet been issued, including an airstrip, the “Barts medical school”, a cruise liner terminal and yacht marina, as well as a road tunnel between the two islands of Malta and Gozo.

What they said

A spokesman for Grant Thornton's Malta office said that “in 2015 an investment opportunity document was prepared by Grant Thornton upon engagement from a privately owned business client, to be shared with potential investors” and that “neither as part of this investment opportunity document nor in any other instance did Grant Thornton discuss or propose any Government projects prior to them being in the public domain”. The firm added that it “does not have and has not had any contractual relationship with Al Raha Group for Technical Services (RGTS) or Mr Yusuf Khalaf.”

On behalf of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, a spokesman said that the investment opportunity cited by RGTS, “involved a bid to operate parts of Malta's healthcare system, including the construction of a medical school building for Queen Mary, Malta Campus”, but that they did not approach Identity Malta with the opportunity and that they had no part in the process which decided the successful bidder.”

Meetings with government and state authority officials

Representatives of RGTS, including Mr Khalaf, held meetings with then Economy Minister Christian Cardona, then prime minister Joseph Muscat, Jonathan Cardona as CEO of Identity Malta, Mario Vella as executive chairman of Malta Enterprise, Aaron Farrugia as CEO of the Malta Freeport Corporation, and Malta Investment Management Company (MIMCOL). Vella was formerly a director at Grant Thornton as well as president of the governing Labour Party. Malta Enterprise said that they “do not divulge meetings with potential investors” but confirmed that Mr Khalaf and representatives of RGTS “have never registered an application for any of the support measures managed by Malta Enterprise.” Aaron Farrugia said he has no record or recollection of any meeting with Mr Khalaf or any of his firm's representatives.

A new owner for Air Malta?

Without referring to Mr Khalaf specifically, Joseph Muscat denied that any of his meetings with passport applicants had any bearing on the outcome of their applications. Asked whether he discussed privatising Air Malta, Malta's national airline, with Mr Khalaf or RGTS representatives, Muscat said “If this issue was mentioned during the meeting, it obviously was in a preliminary manner and did not lead to anything concrete.”

‘Genuine links’

Mr Khalaf flew in and out of Malta within 60 hours, according to a bill for a private flight included with his application for citizenship. A letter he sent to Identity Malta, also seen by the Passport Papers collaboration, explained that he was unable to spend “the 14 days” he originally declared he would spend in Malta, but that he had dispatched employees of his company on visits to the country. The letter cited a €5,000 donation to the Malta Community Chest Fund as evidence of ties to the country. The Khalaf family were granted citizenship of Malta in 2017.

No comment

Yusuf Khalaf, RGTS, and Christian Cardona did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Joe Vella Bonnici refused to take any questions, citing his departure from public service. Mario Vella, Malta Enterprise's head at the time of RGTS' meeting, could not be traced for comment.