Vanuatu pushes citizenship-by-investment as costs of living rise
GOLDEN PASSPORTS
A friendly source in the citizenship-by-investment business is very rude about Vanuatu’s passport-for-scale scheme because it offers honorary, rather than full, citizenship. (“Honorary citizenship? What’s that? It’s like being honorarily pregnant,” he says.)
However, there do seem to be folks out there taking advantage of what the Pacific archipelago has to offer, according to Robin Kapapa, who runs the country’s citizenship-by-investment program — including the controversial Gupta brothers.
- “Kapapa said that Atul and Rajesh became Vanuatu citizens under the country’s Economic Citizenship Programme in 2019 upon declaring their innocence.”
They continue to declare their innocence. The Gupta brothers are accused of corruption and state capture in South Africa and are currently (successfully) resisting extradition from the United Arab Emirates. But this is the kind of thing that gives a golden passport program a bad name. From February 2023, the European Union suspended its visa waiver program with Vanuatu, citing the risks posed by the nation’s laissez-faire approach to welcoming wealthy people into its warm embrace.
So why would someone want a Vanuatu passport? Here’s a heart-warming (if, possibly, fictional) story from a passport broker’s website about an elderly Indian gentleman who bought one so he could get heart surgery in the U.K. and who got it in just one and a half months for a very reasonable $130,000. In fact, because so many of the broker’s clients were getting citizenship at the same time, the gentleman paid just $5,000 for the final ceremony, two-thirds off the normal price! I confess that I’m puzzled by the notion of getting a group discount on a pledge of allegiance but, no matter, on with the show.