(Global Witness) Golden visa schemes offer fast-track citizenship and/or residency to foreign nationals in exchange for lots of cash. European golden visas are particularly appealing, as they give their owners free reign to move throughout the EU, unconstrained by interference or checks.
There are numerous examples of high-risk business people and oligarchs enjoying all the benefits that golden visas have to offer.
Currently, four EU Member States sell passports and 12 trade with residency rights. Given the inherent risks, these schemes ought to have the highest standards of due diligence checks so that countries know who they are welcoming in and where their money came from. Unfortunately, that is not what our joint investigation with Transparency International found. We discovered that risky individuals are buying access to the EU, and that these schemes are risking the corruption of the state itself as profit-hungry governments disregard the dangers and enter into a race to the bottom to attract hefty investments.
Finding safe haven through these schemes is simpler than you might think if you have a lot of money to spare. Despite the risks posed by golden visa schemes, several of the governments selling residency and citizenship do not seem to question where applicants’ money comes from. This perhaps contributes to the EU:
- Welcoming over 6,000 new citizens and close to 100,000 new residents through golden visas schemes in the last decade.
- Attracting around €25 billion in foreign direct investment through golden visas over the last ten years.
While some nations are profiting from the sales of golden visas, all EU citizens take the sizeable hit due to the ethical implications and risks embedded in the current practice. Nonetheless, secrecy continues to obscure even basic information about these schemes and EU citizens do not have the information necessary to decide whether selling residency or citizenship is a risk worth taking.
We have worked with Transparency International to change this, investigating publicly available sources and reaching out to national governments for additional information. In our latest report, we are able to shine some light on the shady situation, revealing a telling though still incomplete picture of the golden visa scheme.
