And none of them are particularly positive…
They say that a week can be a long time in politics.
Indeed, it was less than a fortnight ago that we reported on St Kitts extending their limited-time discount offer on Citizenship By Investment.
And then, just two days later, Vanuatu and Dominica both lost their visa-free access to the UK – based on allegations that they had approved CBI applicants who’d previously been refused UK visas…
Now it’s no secret that Brussels despises CBI and Golden Visas; these programs have been under fire from EU bureaucrats for several years now.
And for the past couple of days, the industry rumor mill has been abuzz with reports of serious changes coming to the Caribbean.
And vexingly, these proved to be uncannily accurate:
Today, St Kitts and Nevis’ Citizenship By Investment Unit announced a number of radical, category-killing changes to their program…
St Kitts CBI changes: A case of the turkeys voting for Christmas?
Previously, according to an independent news outlet, the European Commission would imminently demand the following six changes of all countries offering CBI programs:
-
- Introduction of Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) on all applicants, to be conducted by reputable international EDD firms based in the EU, US, and UK.
- The implementation of mandatory interviews for all CBI applicants.
- No official citizenship documents or passports should be sent to new citizens via postal services.
- The investment thresholds should be increased, with a minimum of US $200,000 (per single applicant) for applications under the donation option, and a minimum of US $400,000 for real estate investments.
- The flow of CBI investment funds must be monitored and verified against strict Anti Money Laundering (AML) processes. This includes the requirement that the investment funds should be transferred directly to the host country.
- The abolition of all promotional materials highlighting visa-free access to the EU as a program benefit…
And as recently as yesterday, members of Team Sovereign Man were scoffing at these predictions around the office water cooler…
Except then today, St Kitts and Nevis, the grandfather of the Caribbean CBI industry, rolled over and took it from American and European bureaucrats…
By late lunchtime in the dual-island Caribbean nation, the above changes were pretty much ALL confirmed as being effective immediately.
Now let’s call a spade a spade here:
When you apply for Citizenship By Investment in St Kitts, it’s pretty clear what you’re after: a second passport before you renounce your US passport… geopolitical diversification… EU and UK visa-free travel – you get the picture.
When you buy a Tesla, you don’t need to take an oath of fealty to Emperor Elon Musk.
So why on earth would the EU expect CBI applicants to act like St Kitts and Nevis’ cultural norms were somehow hallowed to them all of a sudden?
As of this writing, it is 10:30 PM local time in Europe, and even our typically sanguine analysts are getting a little in their feelings over all of this malarkey.
But suffice to say…
Whenever we pound the table, saying that you need to grab a good citizenship or residency deal the moment you see it… It is exactly for this kind of reason that we do so.
Portugal’s Residency By Property Investment program…
Montenegro and Cyprus’ Citizenship By Investment programs…
All casualties of the EU’s ultra-dogmatic and disingenuous views.
Did St Kitts acquiesce to all of this in the naive hope that Brussels was going to be satisfied? Thinking, somehow, that these concessions would be “enough”? Or was it a case of individual politicians being bought..?
The truth likely won’t emerge fully for quite some time to come.
But in the interim – with Caribbean CBI programs’ visa-free access privileges getting revoked seemingly overnight – it might be prudent to adopt a wait-and-see approach…
Before dropping a quarter of a million dollars on a travel booklet that might not perform as advertised in the near future…
Yours in Freedom,
Team Sovereign Man
