Brussels calls for sanctioned oligarchs to lose EU citizenship
So-called golden passport schemes allowed wealthy Russians permanent residency
Golden, no longer
The European Commission has had a long struggle with countries selling passports or offering permanent residency to wealthy investors in the country. Malta, Cyprus and Bulgaria in particular have come in the crosshairs during the past decade, though all of them have scrapped (or, in the case of Malta, suspended) the schemes by now.
Still, the commission yesterday issued a recommendation urging countries to fully abolish these regimes and even look into ways to revoke the citizenship or residency granted to the 30-odd Russian oligarchs who have been sanctioned by the EU in connection with Putin’s war in Ukraine, write Valentina Pop in Brussels, Eleni Varvitsioti in Athens and Peter Wise in Lisbon.
EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders said the schemes were in breach of the bloc’s treaties and posed security risks, as well as opened possibilities for corruption, money laundering and tax avoidance.
“All member states concerned should end their investor citizenship schemes immediately,” Reynders said. “In addition, they should assess whether they should revoke any ‘golden passports’ already granted to sanctioned individuals and others significantly supporting Putin’s war.”
In Cyprus, authorities confirmed that one sanctioned oligarch had previously acquired Cypriot nationality via its now defunct golden passport scheme that applied to people investing over €2mn in the country.
Russian agriculture billionaire Vadim Moshkovich, sanctioned by the EU and reportedly a beneficiary of the Cyprus golden passport scheme, fits the profile, but Cypriot authorities refused to confirm his name on privacy grounds. Moshkovich’s name was revealed in an Al Jazeera investigation in 2020 that obtained the records of the Cyprus golden visa scheme and led to street protests, high-level resignations and the abolition of the scheme.
When asked yesterday whether authorities would revoke the person’s passport, Cyprus president Nicos Anastasiades said “we will see”.
“Up until this point, Cyprus has fully supported [the sanctions regime based on] international law. Be sure that we will continue in the same direction,” Anastasiades said.
In Portugal, authorities are separately in the process of reviewing the naturalisation process of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who has also been placed on the EU’s asset freeze and travel ban list because of his connections to the Kremlin.
Wealthy investors buying property in Portugal can be granted permanent residency in the country — and thus travel visa-free in the EU — but Abramovich acquired his Portuguese passport last year via a different process that enables the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Portugal in the late 15th century to become citizens. He could still be stripped of it if the investigations disclose any wrongdoing.
Earlier this month, the Lisbon government altered its nationality legislation in relation to the descendants of Sephardic Jews, making it a requirement to demonstrate “a strong and lasting contemporary link to Portugal” in addition to Sephardic ancestry. This was “to prevent a generous and just law from being perverted by manipulation”, said Augusto Santos Silva, foreign minister in the outgoing government.
As a Portuguese passport holder, Abramovich cannot be prevented from entering the country, Santos Silva said. But he added that he was “very unlikely to do so” as EU sanctions meant he would be stripped not only of any assets he was found to own in Portugal, but also those he carried with him.
On its so-called golden visa scheme, Portugal has said that it only uncovered one pending application from someone in the sanctions list and suspended it. The residency scheme has been tightened and Portuguese authorities no longer issue those permits for Russian citizens. Of the roughly 430 Russian nationals who had already obtained permanent residency, none were on the sanctions list, according to Portuguese authorities.
In Sofia, the Bulgarian government is currently reviewing the roughly 200 golden passports already granted before the scheme was scrapped. “The sanctioned Russians are a clear case in point, I think their passports will be revoked faster,” said a Bulgarian official familiar with the matter.
And in Malta, a spokesman for the government yesterday said that no sanctioned Russian or Belarusian nationals had acquired Maltese citizenship under its currently suspended scheme.
Brussels’ renewed efforts to crack down on golden passports was welcomed in the north, with Sweden’s minister for integration and migration, Anders Ygeman, saying his government “has pushed for this” and that “people from outside the EU should not be able to buy civil rights in an EU country in exchange for money”.
