Researchers’ note: we are not sui­ci­dal and are incred­i­bly hap­py with our lives and have ful­fill­ing friend­ships and rela­tion­ships with our fam­i­lies. If we sud­den­ly go miss­ing or are mur­dered, please assume that it is either the rul­ing par­ty or any of the oppo­si­tion par­ties look­ing to man­u­fac­ture a sit­u­a­tion where they can use what hap­pens to us as a cam­paign prop. If this cit­i­zen research write-up is removed, please assume that we were intim­i­dat­ed, legal­ly threat­ened, or had received death threats. If they man­u­fac­ture a “ter­ror­ism” case to frame us, remem­ber that we are paci­fists in our per­son­al lives who do not want any killing, harm­ing, or incite­ment there­of. If they assas­si­nate our char­ac­ter with lies, please dis­card us and car­ry this mes­sage on your­selves. Sus­pect every par­ty and their cor­po­rate spon­sors, for they are either Zion­ists, Zion­ist-sym­pa­this­ers, or will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tors. You may harm or kill us now, but it is us who will face the after­life with our heads proud­ly held high while you burn with the con­se­quences. When you are ques­tioned by God, will you tell Him that you did it for the mon­ey or par­ty? Will you tell Him you were just fol­low­ing orders?

@jubraanshareef: Ten months ago, the Mal­di­vian gov­ern­ment signed an agree­ment with Lon­don-based firm Hen­ley & Part­ners, to design its first ever res­i­dence-by-invest­ment pro­gramme. The firm has been the sub­ject of sev­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions by the Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion Report­ing Project (OCCRP) for over a decade. This is the same firm that designed the Mal­tese pro­gramme that jour­nal­ist Daphne Caru­a­na Gal­izia was inves­ti­gat­ing when she was assas­si­nat­ed in 2017.

None of this has been exam­ined at length by any Mal­di­vian news out­let.

The brief, most­ly fac­tu­al write-ups that fol­lowed July’s announce­ment car­ried Henley’s fram­ing of itself, and stopped there.

On 5 Novem­ber 2025, at an indus­try con­fer­ence in Lon­don, Eco­nom­ic Min­is­ter Mohamed Saeed announced the launch of the Mal­dives Pearl Res­i­dence, with Hen­ley as its archi­tect. The migra­tion con­sul­tan­cy firm is chaired by Swiss busi­ness­man Chris­t­ian Kaelin, whom OCCRP has called “the Pass­port King”. Kaelin is also founder and chair­man of the Andan Foun­da­tion, where for­mer Mal­di­vian Pres­i­dent Mohamed Nasheed serves as an advi­sor. The Foun­da­tion and Hen­ley award­ed Mohamed Nasheed the Glob­al Cit­i­zen Award in 2024, and along with it USD 20,000.

@s.s.silverfish: what’s worth not­ing, by the way, is that Kälin — the chair of Hen­ley & Part­ners that has a sub­sidiary head­quar­ters in none oth­er than Tel moth­er­fuck­ing Aviv — has uploaded an inter­view between him and the Israeli jour­nal­ist Ronit Domke (who has in no small part worked tire­less­ly to laun­der Israel’s rep­u­ta­tion so that their cit­i­zens may access oth­er nation­al pass­ports) about Israelis secur­ing pass­ports in oth­er coun­tries. Here’s the Eng­lish trans­la­tion there­of. The fun quote is this one:

“Henley’s most recent con­tract, he says, is with the Mal­dives. ‘It’s one of the top tourist des­ti­na­tions in the world with a strong brand. Peo­ple go there for vaca­tion, but now the gov­ern­ment wants them to buy a sec­ond home and receive res­i­den­cy. We’re help­ing pro­mote the visa, which they call the ‘Pearl Visa.’ We expect wealthy peo­ple from around the world to buy addi­tion­al homes there, and we hope many Israelis will do so.’”

Do you real­ly think we can vote or peti­tion our way out of this, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that the con­trolled oppo­si­tion yel­low par­ty is full of Zion­ist-sym­pa­this­ers who were the first Mal­di­vian par­ty to estab­lish diplo­mat­ic rela­tions with Israel? None of these par­ties or elec­toral politi­cians are your allies.

Remem­ber, the issue with Hen­ley & Part­ners is not just their col­lab­o­ra­tion with the geno­cide state, it’s the entire cor­po­ra­tion and their track record of mur­der­ous vio­lence and cor­rup­tion — as we will explore fur­ther here­in. You should not just sim­ply be call­ing for cut­ting out the Israeli bit, you should be call­ing for the abo­li­tion of this entire project and the can­cel­la­tion of any “deals” we may have with this enti­ty.

What the Pearl Res­i­dence pro­gram offers: an overview of the grift

@jubraanshareef: The pro­gramme was pro­mot­ed in Pres­i­dent Mohamed Muiz­zu’s par­lia­men­tary address in Feb­ru­ary 2026 and was sched­uled to launch in April. That dead­line has now passed. As of this writ­ing in May, the pro­gramme has not yet offi­cial­ly opened. Hen­ley’s offi­cial web­site states that the pro­gramme is set to launch in “H1 of 2026”. With H1 end­ing on 30 June, the full launch can be expect­ed with­in the next few weeks.

The joint announce­ment in July 2025 framed the Pearl Res­i­dence as a res­i­dence-by-invest­ment pro­gramme struc­tured around real estate acqui­si­tion, tar­get­ing ultra-high-net-worth indi­vid­u­als. Philippe Ama­rante, Hen­ley’s Man­ag­ing Part­ner and Head of Gov­ern­ment Advi­so­ry EMEA, told guests at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Sin­ga­pore that the pro­gramme would offer “state-of-the-art prop­er­ties with the utmost pri­va­cy and exclu­siv­i­ty” to investors seek­ing “the ulti­mate hedge against geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict or glob­al pan­demics”. The remarks passed with no reac­tion from local media.

The legal ground­work for for­eign res­i­den­cy by invest­ment was laid in Novem­ber 2020, when the for­mer Pres­i­dent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih rat­i­fied the sec­ond amend­ment to the Immi­gra­tion Act. Before the amend­ment, only for­eign nation­als invest­ing at least USD 50 mil­lion could obtain a res­i­dent visa. The 2020 change reduced the min­i­mum require­ment to USD 250,000 and cre­at­ed a cor­po­rate res­i­dent visa for for­eign­ers will­ing to keep USD 250,000 in a fixed deposit at a Mal­di­vian bank for five years.

In an op-ed pub­lished in IMGlob­al Wealth on 26 Decem­ber 2025, Min­is­ter Saeed wrote that the pro­gramme could gen­er­ate “more than 1 bil­lion USD in direct and indi­rect inflows” to the Mal­di­vian econ­o­my. So essen­tial­ly, blood mon­ey is okay so long as we’re the ones get­ting it, huh?

The Pearl Res­i­dence is a res­i­den­cy pro­gramme, not a cit­i­zen­ship pro­gramme. The Mal­di­vian con­sti­tu­tion restricts cit­i­zen­ship to Mus­lims, and there is no pro­vi­sion for cit­i­zen­ship by invest­ment. Although a res­i­dence per­mit is a pow­er­ful doc­u­ment; it is not a pass­port.

@s.s.silverfish: all of this while talk­ing about how Mal­di­vians are fac­ing a hous­ing “cri­sis” and how we must com­mit eco­cide to the point of leav­ing us com­plete­ly vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate cri­sis dis­as­ters (by ruin­ing our nat­ur­al defence ecosys­tems). So we don’t have enough land to build hous­es for any­one so we must pour more peo­ple into an already con­gest­ed-to-death Malé city and cut down every remain­ing tree there and suf­fo­cate every remain­ing lagoon with dredg­ing, but we have plen­ty of land to house Israelis (and oth­er ultra-rich elites) in our scarce islands because… let’s see… they will give us “invest­ment” mon­ey?

Are you shit­ting me? Pink flag, yel­low flag, turquoise flag — all of you elec­toral-demo­c­rat politi­cians are the same.

The mur­der­ous, cor­rupt enti­ty Hen­ley & Part­ners real­ly is

@jubraanshareef: In his own words, Min­is­ter Saeed has described Hen­ley’s role in the Pearl Res­i­dence as “pro­gramme struc­tur­ing, investor engage­ment, and inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing”. That is an unusu­al­ly frank sum­ma­ry of how Hen­ley oper­ates.

The fir­m’s busi­ness mod­el, refined since its first major gov­ern­ment con­tract with St. Kitts and Nevis in 2006, fol­lows a con­sis­tent tem­plate. Hen­ley approach­es a small coun­try with lim­it­ed fis­cal options. It pro­pos­es an investor migra­tion pro­gramme. It then drafts the legal frame­work, mar­kets the pro­gramme to wealthy for­eign­ers world­wide, runs ini­tial due dili­gence on appli­cants, and in some pro­grammes chan­nels the qual­i­fy­ing invest­ments through projects on which its affil­i­at­ed real estate arm, Hen­ley Estates, takes com­mis­sions. The host gov­ern­ment receives appli­cant fees and dona­tions or invest­ments. Hen­ley earns at mul­ti­ple points in the same trans­ac­tion. Whether the Mal­di­vian Pearl Res­i­dence will fol­low this exact mod­el is unclear.

In Mal­ta, Hen­ley designed the Indi­vid­ual Investor Pro­gramme that jour­nal­ist Daphne Caru­a­na Gal­izia was inves­ti­gat­ing at the time she was assas­si­nat­ed in Octo­ber 2017. Accord­ing to the OCCRP, Hen­ley was con­trac­tu­al­ly des­ig­nat­ed the pro­gram­me’s “unique con­ces­sion­aire”, giv­ing it the right to dis­trib­ute fees to dozens of law firms pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions and to oper­ate its own real estate com­pa­ny tak­ing com­mis­sions on the qual­i­fy­ing prop­er­ty invest­ments. Hen­ley earned 28.8 mil­lion euros in pro­gramme fees by Decem­ber 2018. In 2025, the Euro­pean Court of Jus­tice ruled the Mal­tese cit­i­zen­ship pro­gramme unlaw­ful, end­ing it after more than a decade.

In Cyprus, OCCRP report­ed in 2021 that Hen­ley had processed a cit­i­zen­ship appli­ca­tion for Jho Low, the fugi­tive financier at the cen­tre of the 1MDB scan­dal in which an esti­mat­ed $4.5 bil­lion was loot­ed from a Malaysian sov­er­eign wealth fund (note by @s.s.silverfish: what Nasheed and Fayyaz wants to estab­lish here too, by the way). Hen­ley’s inter­nal files clas­si­fied Low as a high risk polit­i­cal­ly exposed per­son. The appli­ca­tion pro­ceed­ed. Hen­ley earned €60,000 on the cit­i­zen­ship and a fur­ther €650,000 on arrang­ing Low’s vil­la pur­chase. The Cypri­ot pro­gramme was sus­pend­ed in 2020 after Al Jazeer­a’s “Cyprus Papers” inves­ti­ga­tion exposed broad­er abus­es.

In the Caribbean, where Hen­ley built the orig­i­nal mod­el, an OCCRP inves­ti­ga­tion in March 2022 used leaked inter­nal doc­u­ments to iden­ti­fy a ros­ter of appli­cants who had been approved through Hen­ley. They includ­ed the wife of sanc­tioned Russ­ian oli­garch Suley­man Ker­i­mov, who bought a $6 mil­lion prop­er­ty at the Christophe Har­bour devel­op­ment to qual­i­fy for St Kitts cit­i­zen­ship, gen­er­at­ing Hen­ley a $480,000 com­mis­sion. They includ­ed Ruben Var­danyan, co-founder of the Russ­ian bank whose employ­ees ran the $4.6 bil­lion Troi­ka Laun­dro­mat mon­ey laun­der­ing oper­a­tion, ranked at the high­est risk lev­el by Hen­ley’s own sys­tems. They includ­ed a sit­ting pres­i­dent of Arme­nia, Armen Sarkiss­ian, who held a St Kitts pass­port in vio­la­tion of his coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion on dual cit­i­zen­ship for heads of state. They includ­ed an Indi­an busi­ness­man sub­ject to an Inter­pol red notice for forgery and fraud, whose appli­ca­tion was ini­tial­ly reject­ed and then approved on appeal.

In sev­er­al report­ed cas­es, Hen­ley’s own inter­nal risk sys­tems flagged the appli­cants accu­rate­ly. The appli­ca­tions pro­ceed­ed. Most were approved. In response to OCCRP, Hen­ley has con­sis­tent­ly said that final approval rests with sov­er­eign gov­ern­ments and that the firm fol­lows the screen­ing process­es those gov­ern­ments spec­i­fy. That defence holds at the lev­el of any sin­gle trans­ac­tion. The aggre­gate pic­ture is hard­er to defend.

Struc­tur­al issues with this pro­gramme

In Mal­ta, in Cyprus, in St Kitts, the same archi­tec­ture has pro­duced the same out­comes. A small coun­try needs rev­enue. Hen­ley pro­vides a ready-made pro­gramme. The pro­gramme oper­ates for sev­er­al years gen­er­at­ing fees on both sides. A scan­dal breaks, a jour­nal­ist is assas­si­nat­ed, an EU body inter­venes. The pro­gramme is sus­pend­ed, restruc­tured, or shut down. The host coun­try has to deal with the rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age while Hen­ley moves on to the next con­tract.

The rea­son the pat­tern is con­sis­tent is that it is struc­tur­al. Hen­ley earns mon­ey when appli­cants are approved. Hen­ley does not earn mon­ey when appli­cants are reject­ed. What­ev­er the fir­m’s stat­ed val­ues, the gra­di­ent of incen­tives runs in one direc­tion. In mul­ti­ple report­ed cas­es, the firm flagged appli­cants as the high­est risk tier and then sub­mit­ted the appli­ca­tion any­way, some­times appeal­ing ini­tial gov­ern­ment rejec­tions suc­cess­ful­ly.

For the Mal­dives, the coun­try’s recent his­to­ry with dis­cre­tionary tourism leas­ing is trou­bled. The Mal­dives Mar­ket­ing and Pub­lic Rela­tions Cor­po­ra­tion scan­dal dur­ing the Yameen admin­is­tra­tion saw an esti­mat­ed $90 mil­lion in tourism lease rev­enues divert­ed to politi­cians and asso­ciates, impli­cat­ing a for­mer pres­i­dent and senior offi­cials. The insti­tu­tion­al appa­ra­tus that approved those leas­es is, in broad terms, the same appa­ra­tus that will approve Pearl Res­i­dence devel­op­ments.

The eyes of Heav­en — jus­tice pre­vails, and his­to­ry is per­ma­nent

@s.s.silverfish: I’m sure you’ve heard of Newton’s third law of motion: every action on an object has an equal oppo­site reac­tion. Then there’s Einstein’s spe­cial the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty that states that mass and ener­gy are equiv­a­lent phe­nom­e­na, two dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tions of the same thing. I believe those laws apply even to a socio-psy­cho­log­i­cal dimen­sion, whether it’s in this life or after you die.

What I’m say­ing is that the harm you inflict and the harm you help inflict (or turn a blind eye to) will fol­low you to col­lect their toll. Has all that tem­po­rary pow­er inject­ed into your veins by cap­i­tal and the appa­ra­tus of the neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic machine made you believe you are invin­ci­ble? Per­haps that your actions are jus­ti­fied? Per­haps that you are an excep­tion to world­ly or divine jus­tice?

When your sins are laid bare under the eyes of Heav­en, when your com­plic­i­ty is engraved into his­to­ry, are you going to make the excuse that you had no choice? Or are you going to say you were fol­low­ing orders? Or are you going to say you believed it was for the greater good?

What­ev­er. You are the bear­er of your actions and their con­se­quences. I am not the judge, jury, pros­e­cu­tor, or exe­cu­tion­er. That will be decid­ed by the uni­verse. What I am is per­haps a reminder to you that it’s still not too late to repent, turn back, and make amends.

At this point, any­one who con­tin­ues to help par­ties (any par­ty at all) laun­der their rep­u­ta­tions whether as rul­ing or “oppo­si­tion” are equal­ly com­plic­it in the evils com­mit­ted by their lead­ing struc­tures. “You have no choice”? “You were silenced”? “This is prag­mat­ic pol­i­tics”? Bull­shit. The minute some­one even tries to think about an alter­na­tive world, you mock them and you dis­miss them.

And this is what you get: creep­ing impe­ri­al­ism and coex­is­tence with colonis­ers.

Turn back. Resign. It’s not too late.