Minister promotes Grenada across Europe and China – Alexandra Otway, Grenada’s Minister of Implementation, has traveled to London, Zurich, and several cities in China to promote the countries Citizenship by Investment program.
Number of Chinese investors applying for NZ residency jumps 48% over past year – The number of investor visa applications processed by Immigration New Zealand has increased 12-fold in the last five years, from 18 in 2009/10 to 218 in 2014/15. Research by PwC has found that applicants need to invest more than the NZ$1.5 million threshold to become eligible due to government limits on the number of approved visas.
SIV to raise $3.5bn annually: Basis Point – Business intelligence firm Basis Point, speaking at the third annual Significant Investor Visa conference, estimates that Australia’s Significant Investor Visa will attract A$3.5 billion per year through 700 successful applications.
New USCIS Data Shows Remarkable Growth for EB-5 Program – IIUSA analysis of USCIS data has found that the amount of investment in the first two quarters of FY2015 represented a $400 million increase compared to the first two quarters of FY2014 and a $1.1 billion increase compared to the first two quarters of FY2013.
Millionaire migration to Canada didn’t fall after investor scheme’s axing – it rose, new data reveals – Despite the closure of Canada’s federal IIP, the number of immigrant investors entering the country increased in 2014 dues to intake from Quebec’s program.
VC fund OneVenture says vetting investors too ‘burdensome’ – Australian venture capital firm OneVentures has called for the government to take over verification of wealthy immigrants coming to Australia under the Significant Investor Visa program because it is too “burdensome’’ for the funds receiving the money. Managing Director Paul Kelly says that funds do not have the resources or expertise to police the KYC and AML rules for such large numbers of applicants.
Canada’s new millionaire migration scheme gets just six applications, in snub from rich Chinese – Canada’s new Immigrant Investor Venture Capital program has received just six applications worldwide according to data obtained by the South China Morning Post. despite the government initially seeking 500 applications. Critics blame the lack of uptake on high cost and risk factors compared to its defunct predecessor.
St Kitts and Nevis: New anti-corruption leader of Caribbean island vows to clean up trade in passports for super-rich – Prime Minister Timothy Harris admits he is unsure of how many passports have been issued under the CBI program, but is committed to finding out, commenting, “I hope that we can have a look back over the applications – or as many of them as we can find – and begin to document that, so that those statistics can be made to people in a reasonable time [but] within four months we could not undo what was done over 20 years.”
Wealthy Chinese leaving country for basic needs not tax breaks – A number of reports have found that an increasing number of wealthy Chinese wants to emigrate, motivated by desires to escape pollution and improve educational prospects for their children.
IMF Grenada review seeks the transparent and sustainable management of citizenship-by-investment receipts – Grenada commits to publishing on the Ministry of Finance website on a quarterly basis all CBI-related statistics starting in July 2015, also agrees that CBI-financed National Transformation Fund spending will be balanced between debt reduction and transformational investment projects.