Cyprus has announced that it will stop the “Golden Passport” investment immigration program as of November 1, which is expected to put an end to the immigration of Chinese dignitaries. According to a statement tweeted by the country’s Interior and Finance Ministries, the current investment immigration program has “weaknesses” and “abuses”. According to the source, Cyprus Parliament Speaker Demetris Syllouris has announced that he will resign on the 19th. Investigative documents, reported by Al Jazeera, had alleged that he was involved in selling passports to criminals using the Immigrant Investor Program.
According to a news report cited by Guanghua today, Cyprus scrapped its golden passports and the road to emigration for the Chinese elite was cut short. The report cited an Al Jazeera investigation released in August titled “Cyprus Papers,” which found that nearly 500 wealthy Chinese businessmen have obtained Cyprus passports in recent years by way of investment, including Asia’s richest woman, Yang Huiyin of Country Garden, as well as a number of National People’s Congress deputies, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) members and state-owned enterprises China Resources (CR). Tang Yong, the president of Electric Power, and others. Al Jazeera also said that between 2017 and 2019, Cyprus approved 1,400 “golden passports” for applicants from more than 70 countries around the world, many of them criminals, with the largest number of applicants coming from high-risk countries such as Russia, China and Ukraine.
According to the report, Chinese nationals are the second most frequent clients of the immigrant investor program. However, under Chinese law, these CPPCC members, deputies to the National People’s Congress and cadres of state-owned enterprises are supposed to lose their Chinese nationality and political positions.
Cyprus launched the “Golden Passport” immigration program in 2013, which allows you to become a citizen within six months with an investment of 2.5 million Euros (about RM12.15 million) and without having to go to immigration jail. As Cyprus is a member of the European Union, having the nationality of the country is equivalent to enjoying the benefits of residency, migration and work in the EU-27.
The application for a Cyprus passport requires no criminal record in addition to meeting the conditions for investment in the region. However, news reports indicate that Zhang Keqiang, a businessman from China, has been convicted of equity trading, while another businessman, Li Jiadong, has been sanctioned by the United States for laundering more than $100 million. Both of them have been issued “golden passports” to Cyprus.
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