EU to shut doors of citizenship to wealthy Russians
The mass sale of European citizenship to wealthy Russians and natives of former USSR states has caused dissatisfaction among the EU authorities.
The practice of issuing “golden visas” and “golden passports” in exchange for investments in property must be stopped, said European Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová.
According to her, new rules restricting the inflow into the EU of migrants with suspicious sources of capital will be drafted and published in September.
“In recent years, an increasing number of EU countries have been offering citizenship to people if they invest large sums of money,” Jourová said, adding that Brussels is monitoring the issue “with great circumspection”.
She added that, by acquiring citizenship, “criminals threaten Europe’s security, or want to launder their capital here”.
“The EU must not become a refuge for corruption and dirty money,” Jourová said, emphasizing that “several member countries must do more to avoid granting citizenship”.
As Der Spiegel reported, the European Commission has its sights on Greece, Cyprus and Malta, which actively trade in passports, whose primary buyers are Russians and citizens of former Soviet republics.
According to the Maltese government, every second participant in the “Citizenship for investment” program, which has been active since 2013, has supposedly been of Russian origin.
Among the people who have invested €650,000, at least €350,000 in property and €150,000 in approved government bonds, in the last 3 years, more than 700 have been persons with typical Russian names and surnames – including the exact names of major businessmen and officials featuring on the Forbes list.
These include Yandex founder Arkady Volozh and his family, 01 Group investment company owner Boris Mints, and ICT holdings company co-owner Alexander Nesis. All three are on the Russian Forbes list, with $1.1, $1.3 and $2.4 billion respectively.
Others who have become Maltese include namesakes of the largest vodka producers in Russia, Beluga Group co-owner Alexander Mechetin, Igor Khudokormov – one of the largest Russian land owners, and Alexei Marey – CEO and deputy chairman of Alfa-Bank, who resigned in 2017 in order to move to London with his family.
The list also features the presumed family of Vladimir Voronin, owner of the FSK Leader development company; persons with the same names as the senior managers of Kaspersky Lab; Pavel Grachev, CEO of the Polyus gold mining, who is on the Forbes list of Russia’s top 25 high-paid managers; Dmitry Doykhen and Nikolay Fartushnyak – co-founders of the Sportmaster chain of sports shops; the brother of the former Russian minister of transport and presidential aide Igor Levitin, with his family, and many others.
Buying passports is only the tip of the iceberg, a study by Tranio shows: at the same time, most affluent Russian citizens are trying to get rid of their status as Russian taxpaying residents.
Such a choice has been made by three out of five wealthy Russians with offshore capital. Most often, Russians become residents of Cyprus or the UK (63%). 30% choose Monaco, Malta or Switzerland.