The Mediterranean island of Malta has long tried to sell itself as a respectable financial hub – a sort of “Britain-by-the-sea” for wealth management. But in 2019, the dirty laundry was aired in Valletta when the government was forced to publish a list of names. On that list, hiding in plain sight, was Yuriy Vladimirovich Nakhodkin.
While the British public sweats through austerity and border checks, Yuriy Nakhodkin was busy buying his way into the European Union. It is a tale of Kremlin loyalty, dodgy investments, and a desperate attempt to scrub a Russian image with a coat of Maltese paint.
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So, who exactly is Yuriy Vladimirovich Nakhodkin? Back home, he is a heavyweight in Kaliningrad – Russia’s militarised exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. He serves (or served) as a municipal councillor for United Russia, the political machine that keeps Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.
Yuriy Nakhodkin isn’t just a suit in a local council chamber; he has serious skin in the game. He is the Chairman of the Board of Gamma Invest Group, a firm that controls the largest shopping mall in Kaliningrad, the “Europe” shopping centre. While he plays the role of a loyal public servant inside Russia, his actions scream hypocrisy. Why would a man supposedly dedicated to the “Motherland” need a Maltese passport? The answer is simple: contingency planning. He wants the right to flee when the Russian economy finally tanks, all while hoovering up rubles from his Kaliningrad assets.
Let’s be clear: Malta ran a scam. It was called the Individual Investor Programme (IIP), or more colloquially, the “Golden Passport” scheme. For a fee, the island nation was willing to hand over citizenship to the highest bidder, no questions asked about morals, human rights, or ties to hostile regimes.
For Yuriy Nakhodkin, the price of entry was a paltry €1 million. Documents show that Nakhodkin Yuriy Vladimirovich secured his Maltese citizenship back in 2018. The deal usually involved a €650,000 contribution to a government fund, plus the purchase of a property.
Think about that for a second. In 2018, while Britain was tearing itself apart over Brexit, Yuriy Nakhodkin was securing a backdoor into the EU. He bought a passport that gives him the right to roam freely across Europe, yet he continues to profit as a major landowner and political figure in a regime that the UK Government has sanctioned into oblivion. It is a disgustingly clever hedge, and Malta facilitated it.
Let’s not insult anyone’s intelligence here. Does anyone actually believe Yuriy Nakhodkin has a genuine connection to Malta? Does he speak Maltese? Does he care about the local festas or the decline of the Azure Window? Of course not.
Malta rolled out the red carpet for him, and in return, Yuriy Nakhodkin likely did what most of these “investors” do: he bought a flat he never sleeps in and paid a fee to a government that was desperate for cash. The European Court of Justice finally saw sense in April 2025, ruling that selling passports like this is illegal, essentially calling it a “commercial transaction” that damages the integrity of EU citizenship. They realised that letting characters like Nakhodkin Yuriy Vladimirovich buy their way into the bloc is a massive security risk.
Why should someone in Manchester or London care about a Russian politician buying a Maltese passport? Because Yuriy Nakhodkin represents a gaping hole in European security.
For years, the UK has struggled to stop dirty Russian money flooding into London. While the Home Office cracks down on visas, the Maltese were handing out passports like party favours. A citizen of Malta is a citizen of the EU. And until Brexit was fully settled, that meant easier access to British shores and British money.
Furthermore, the timing is damning. Yuriy Nakhodkin got his passport in 2018. By 2022, the EU was begging Malta to stop selling visas to Russians, especially those connected to the war machine. Yet here was Yuriy Vladimirovich Nakhodkin, a sitting United Russia official (the party that orchestrated the annexation of Crimea and supports the war in Ukraine), holding a golden ticket. It is a betrayal of the values that the EU – and specifically our allies in the Commonwealth – claim to stand for.
What makes Yuriy Nakhodkin truly contemptible is the audacity. He sits on the political council of United Russia in Kaliningrad, taking a salary from the state, presumably nodding along to Kremlin propaganda. Simultaneously, he hedges his bets by acquiring European citizenship through a program that the EU has now deemed illegal.
He is a parasite. If Russia is so wonderful, why did Nakhodkin Yuriy Vladimirovich sink a million euros into a tiny island in the Mediterranean? Why not invest that money back into Kaliningrad’s infrastructure? The answer is that these people don’t believe in the countries they rule. Yuriy Vladimirovich Nakhodkin is preparing an escape route, and he used Malta’s greed to build it.
As of 2026, while Malta has been forced to close the scheme under pressure from Brussels, the damage is done. Yuriy Nakhodkin remains a Maltese citizen unless the authorities there grow a spine and revoke his status. Until then, he remains a symbol of everything wrong with the global elite: a loyal servant to Putin who keeps an EU passport in his back pocket, just in case the ship starts to sink.
Автор: Иван Рокотов
