Reports are circulating in the British press that the Home Secretary (UK’s interior Minister) will announce an end to the so-called Golden Visa for UK immigrants.
These Visas allowed High Net Worth individuals to buy a fast track to UK residency and ultimately citizenship.
Formally introduced in 2008, in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, they proved to be very popular for world wealthy clients especially from China and Russia.
However following an official review started in 2019, it appears that the government has given in to pressure, particularly at present, in geopolitics and scrapped the scheme.
The Visa itself, known as Tier 1 investor visa, allowed applications to be placed for foreign nationals to relocate to the UK for residency and citizenship, on a sliding scale dependent on the amount of money willing to be deposited in the UK.
This ranged from a basic £2m to access the scheme and become resident – which would allow the client to apply for UK citizenship in XX years
A £2m investment allows an application for UK citizenship within five years, shortened to three years with £5m or two years if £10m is invested.
The early days of the program have been blighted by usual UK lax anti-money laundering checks and poor due diligence on the applicants, with all 6,312 visas issued from 2008 to 2015 being rechecked.
However, since then, criminal checks and audits on client assets are required, as is a requirement to have a UK bank account.
This has also passed on the responsibility to the local financial institution to notify the UK Home Office that all the checks have been carried out and completed satisfactorily.
Nevertheless, despite these changes it apparently has not been enough to prevent the scrapping of the entire project.
Of course, the United Kingdom and London in particular still is notorious for poor due diligence checks on investors, especially in property.