What the Gulf can teach Ras Malé about sovereignty

MALÉ — When the government and Abu Dhabi's Eagle Hills agreed the principal commercial terms for the Maldives Waterfront and Marina on 21 September, much of the public reaction had little to do with the value of the land or the revenue the State expects. It was about who would come to live at Ras Malé, and what influence they might one day have.

The concern runs like this. Wealthy foreigners buy homes, the homes bring visas, and over the years their money reaches politics, the courts and the civil service, until a country of half a million people finds decisions about its future made by people who are not its citizens. It is a serious concern, and it deserves a serious answer. One place to look for that answer is the region Eagle Hills comes from.

The debate so far

Criticism has come from several directions. The Maldivian Democratic Party said it was "deeply concerned", asked the government to publish the agreement, and called for a referendum before any deal that could give foreigners ownership of land. Others have questioned the decision not to disclose its terms. In August, Parliament voted 55 to 10 against a resolution to suspend the Pearl Residence programme, the government's planned scheme to offer residence to foreign investors.

The government has answered firmly. His Excellency Dr Mohamed Muizzu, President of the Republic of Maldives, said on 26 September that the land is leased to the developer and "will not become foreign property". Dr Abdulla Muththalib, the Minister of Infrastructure, Housing and Urban Development, has said that no property can be bought, sold or exchanged without government approval, and that every buyer will be vetted.

Nor does a purchase bring a right to live in the country. Dr Muththalib has said that buying a property does not automatically provide a visa for the buyer or the family, and will never lead to permanent residency or citizenship. As matters stand, a buyer who wishes to stay can only apply for one of the long-stay visas already in use, such as the corporate residence visa introduced in 2015. Maldives Immigration grants it after its own checks and may cancel it at any time, in which case the holder must leave. Mohamed Alabbar, the founder of Eagle Hills, has said that no agreement on residency for buyers has been reached and that the company will follow Maldivian law. Pearl Residence is not yet law.

The President has since said that leases will run for 99 years and then return to the State, with no automatic renewal. On 28 October he added that buyers of any one nationality would be capped at 25 per cent of the properties, that Israeli citizens would be barred from buying, renting or entering the development, and that the full agreement would go to a parliamentary committee together with a special law on real estate tourism.

Article 251 of the Constitution already forbids foreign ownership of Maldivian land and limits leases to 99 years. Foreigners cannot own Ras Malé. The harder question is whether a large and wealthy foreign community could gain influence by other means.

Lessons from the Gulf

No region tests that question more severely. According to the Gulf Labour Markets, Migration and Population programme, non-nationals made up about 87 percent of the UAE's population and 88 percent of Qatar's in 2022, roughly seven foreigners for every citizen. Yet it is Emiratis and Qataris who decide who sits in their courts, who writes their laws and who owns their land. Four arrangements explain how.

The first is that residence depends on the State's permission. A foreign resident of the UAE or Qatar holds a visa that the State issues and can withdraw, and decades of residence do not change that. Investor visas, including the UAE's ten-year Golden Visa, last longer, but they remain permissions.

The second is that citizenship is closely guarded. Qatar's nationality law of 2005 requires 25 consecutive years of lawful residence before a foreigner may even apply, and grants are rare. When the UAE opened a route to citizenship for investors and professionals in 2021, it did so by nomination from the Cabinet, the rulers' courts and the executive councils. Nobody can apply, and nobody can buy a vote.

The third is that foreign ownership is confined by law. Dubai allows non-nationals to hold freehold or long leases only in designated areas chosen by the Ruler, such as Dubai Marina and Downtown Dubai. Everywhere else is closed to them.

The fourth is that the State is trusted to enforce its own rules. In Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures how corrupt experts and business people believe a country's public sector to be, the UAE scored 69 out of 100 and ranked 21st in the world, ahead of several European states. Rules that officials apply consistently are hard for money to evade.

The Gulf model also rests on political systems quite unlike a constitutional democracy, and that part cannot and should not be copied. A democracy has to reach the same control through published law, open decisions and institutions the public trusts. It is a harder path, and a more durable one.

Who will buy

The Gulf's foreign majority is made up largely of workers who came to build and to serve. Ras Malé is designed for a different group: buyers looking for a second home.

Mr Alabbar has cited buyers from the Gulf, Europe and India, including retirees. Since the Maldives introduced sectional ownership, which allows individual villas or apartments within a development to be sold separately, UAE developers have reported more than US$3 billion of Maldivian projects in their pipeline, marketed as second homes for their investors. The UAE itself drew an estimated 9,800 millionaires in 2025, more than any other country, and it lies about four hours' flight from Malé.

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How the very rich behave

Research on what the wealthy do with a second home and an investor visa points one way. They behave as investors and part-time residents, not as settlers in search of a political voice.

A home abroad is normal for them, and rarely their only one. Knight Frank's Wealth Report 2024 found that people with net assets of US$30 million or more, known in the industry as ultra-high-net-worth individuals, own an average of 3.7 homes, hold about 29 percent of their wealth in them, and keep about 27 percent of those homes outside their country of residence. A villa in Ras Malé would be one address among several, occupied for some weeks of the year.

Their reasons are financial and personal. In a Knight Frank survey of 183 wealthy buyers considering Dubai, the leading motive was investment and capital growth, cited by 27 percent, followed by a second or holiday home. Those worth more than US$10 million most often wanted to widen a property portfolio, with an average budget of US$40 million. Analysts estimate that the millionaires who moved to the UAE in 2025 brought about US$63 billion in investable wealth; Henley & Partners attributes their choice to residence visas, legal certainty, lifestyle and location.

Their money also travels beyond property. Wealthy families who settle in Dubai tend to bring their family offices, the private firms that manage a family's investments. The Dubai International Financial Centre recorded more than 1,289 family-related entities at the end of 2025, and its chief executive said in late 2024 that such entities managed more than US$1.2 trillion.

Portugal offers a warning. Its investor visa programme drew an estimated €7.3 billion through 2024, about 88 percent of it into real estate. In the decade before Portugal removed property from the scheme in 2023, house prices rose 55 percent while local incomes grew 9 percent. Foreign buyers were only one cause, but where foreign money competes with local families for the same homes, local families tend to lose. Ras Malé's design separates the two markets, with foreign buyers in the 500-hectare development, the other half of the island reserved for Maldivians, and 5,000 homes in Hulhumalé funded from the State's share. That separation belongs in law.

Mauritius, another small island democracy, shows that the arrangement can work. There, a purchase of at least US$375,000 in an approved scheme brings a residence permit for as long as the property is held. This year its housing minister gave leaseholders 14 days to remove barriers from public beaches or risk losing their leases. A state with clear rules can enforce them against the wealthy.

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What such buyers want most is stability: secure title, predictable taxes and a government that keeps its word. Anyone with millions invested in a country has every reason to want its institutions strong.

Screening

Where foreign money has harmed a country's standing, the cause has usually been weak checks on who was admitted.

Malta sold citizenship to investors from 2014 and raised more than €1.4 billion. In April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled the scheme unlawful, after journalists found that passports had gone to people later sanctioned by the United States or convicted of financial crimes. A European Parliament study of such schemes found their wider benefits for jobs and tax revenue uncertain, and named corruption, money laundering and weak checks on the source of funds as the main dangers. A residence programme is only as sound as the screening behind it and the integrity of the officials who run it.

The Maldives has work to do here. It scored 39 out of 100 on the 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, 91st of 182 countries, and Transparency Maldives has pointed to pressure on oversight bodies and on room for public scrutiny. The Ras Malé reclamation contract has itself been the subject of a complaint to the Anti-Corruption Commission, which opened an investigation in March 2024. None of this argues against the project. It argues for institutions around it that are beyond question.

Four steps would turn the government's assurances into protections that outlast any administration:

• Publish the agreement in full. The President has said a full copy will go to a parliamentary committee. Making it public as well would let everyone confirm the commitments, and would answer the call for a referendum with evidence.
• Write the safeguards into law. The special real estate law the government plans to submit is the place for buyer approval, the 25 per cent nationality cap, the separation of property from visas, the 99-year limit and the rule on resales. Eagle Hills first described each sale as starting a new 99-year term; it now says every transfer is subject to government approval and registration, and the minister has said no new term will begin automatically. The law should state the rule plainly.
• Screen every buyer as a bank would. Checks on the real person behind every buying company, on the source of funds and against international sanctions lists should be made by the Maldives Monetary Authority's financial intelligence unit and Maldives Immigration, not by the developer.
• Protect the institutions that can say no. The worth of the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Auditor General, independent courts and a free press lies in their power to stop a decision, a government decision included. That power is a democracy's strongest guarantee of sovereignty.

Training Maldivians

Sovereignty has an economic side as well. A country whose best-paid jobs are held by foreigners has less say over its own future.

The Maldives already relies heavily on foreign skills. The 2022 census counted 132,493 foreign residents, about one in four people in the country. The Minister of Health told Parliament in August that 60 percent of doctors working in the Maldives are foreign. In resorts, the Maldivian share of payroll employees was 47 percent in 2019 and 42 percent by the end of 2020, below the 45 percent minimum set by the tourism ministry.

The government expects Ras Malé to create more than 54,000 jobs. Construction workers and hotel staff will be needed first, but a district of marinas, clinics, branded residences and service firms will also need engineers, facility managers, nurses, doctors, chefs, accountants and hotel executives. If Maldivians are not ready, those posts will be filled from abroad, as many are today.

The UAE offers a model here too. Under its Nafis programme, companies with 50 or more employees must raise their share of Emirati staff by 2 percentage points a year, with salary support for those that comply and fines for those that do not. About 152,000 Emiratis now work in the private sector through the programme.

Ras Malé could carry a similar plan: rising targets for Maldivian employment in contracts with the developer and its partners, scholarships in medicine, engineering, hospitality management and the sciences timed to the ten-year build, and apprenticeships on site from the first phase. Part of the State's 10 percent revenue share could pay for it, so that when the district is finished, Maldivians are running its hospitals, marinas and hotels.

A second engine

The economic case is strong. Tourism-related income made up 46.9 percent of government revenue and grants in 2025, on Ministry of Finance data in the MMA statistics database (calculations by Good Morning Maldives (GMM)), so a shock to travel, such as this year's conflict in the Gulf, reaches every part of the budget. Property money arrives before a building is finished and stays as long as the home is held. A second source of income that does not move with tourist arrivals would make the whole economy safer.

The cost of that second engine is not measured in land, which Article 251 already protects. It is measured in discipline: an agreement the public can read, a law without gaps, screening that money cannot influence, institutions free to refuse, and a generation of Maldivians trained for the best jobs the project will create.

The Gulf states have shown that a country can host the world's wealthy without being governed by them. They did it with firm rules. The Maldives can do the same, with one advantage the Gulf does not rely on: the consent of its own citizens, expressed through institutions they trust. Ras Malé will show whether those institutions are ready.