By: Staff Writer
February 7, 2023
A Citizenship by Investment executive says that demand from Russians for passports to the Eastern Caribbean have “spiked” after the eruption of the Russian/Ukraine War and is showing no signs of letting up now.
Kemal Nicholson, founder of CINVEST, speaking on the LimeVibe podcast, said that the war in the Ukraine had some benefits for him as it has caused requests and approvals for passports to the Eastern Caribbean to spike considerably.
“Right now, certain markets are more active than others. The Russian market is very active due to the situation with Russia at present, and the Chinese markets, obviously, are always very active and huge influx of immigrants to the UAE as well, mostly from from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries, the ones mostly affected by the ongoing crisis, which is in Russia and Ukraine.”
The amount of passports handed out in the last 12 months are unknow, but Mr Nicholson is, “processing several clients right now for Eastern Caribbean countries,” from Eastern Europe.
Despite the continued scrutiny by the US and Western European authorities of Russian and Chinese nationals buying passports through the CBI process to the Caribbean, Mr Nicholson said that he will continue to “expand” the services to Eastern Europe and China because immigration will not stop regardless of the scrutiny and restrictions.
He added: “It is acceptable that the EU or the UK should have concerns and actually they’re really reviewing in a more serious and stringent manner all of the Eastern Caribbean programmes.
“I think we saw an article come out a few days ago, because they were afraid that it poses a security threat to them.” He was referring to a “notice” sent out by the British government last month warning that all English speaking Caribbean CBI programmes will be heavily scrutinized moving forward.
He continued, “So this is right, but at the same time, the actual mechanism of CBI is doing them a huge favour because you don’t just get the these applicants showing up directly to your door, you’re applying through an internationally scrutinized procedure from a third party state.
“So it’s not like you did not get a British citizenship or EU citizenship or whatever. They’re playing for third party state citizenship, which will be heavily scrutinized.
People, especially wealthy people, will move back and forth at their leisure and if there is an ongoing conflict like there is in the Ukraine, people will migrate. “”So the actual mechanism of having that ultra-wealthy class, go through this due diligence process is actually better for the EU and the UK, because then we’re able to know who we’re dealing with.” Mr Nicholson emphasized.