The World Citizenship Council (WCC) proposes major policy changes to government on the citizenship by investment programs to preserve its visa waiver agreement with the European Union and protect the free movement of all the citizens..
The European commission has proposed partial visa waiver suspension regard to all citizens of Vanuatu holding an ordinary passport issued by Vanuatu as of 25 May 2015
WCC recommends the Vanuatu citizenship commission to immediately apply following policy changes to strengthen the CBI program.
- Admit only applicants who have had schengen visa issued (thus already passed the security checks done by european authorities)
- Blanket ban on applicants under EU blacklist and sanctions ban (eg. Iran, North Korea etc).
- Appoint atleast three international due diligence firms for vetting (internationally renowned firms)
- Apply enhanced due diligence checks on High risk and PEPs.
- Reduce validity of passport issued to 5 years (and do second vetting upon passport renewal to prevent abuse)
- All family members must go through additional due diligence checks (charge additional fee)
- Impose genuine link ties to the country.
- Impose short residence requires and visiting the country
- Remove confusion and operate only one donation program
- Train compliance officers with screening and background checks.
- Seek advice and cooperation with other countries operating CBI program. (eg. Malta is known for gold standard vetting)
- Improve refusal rates on applicants who fail security checks.
- Automatically refuse applicants refused by other CBI programs.
- Appoint a reputable third party firm to design and implement an international standard CBI program.
- Implement a escrow legislation to protect real estate investors.
- Increase vetting time to 3-4 months to ensure smooth and detailed background checks.
Further suggestions
* Have all agents declare who their co-recipients are in their fee-sharing formula.
* Have the applicant to secure a Security Bond for same amount of the fees for a period of say 3 years; so that this third party Insurer will also help to process the background check.
* Have their Banker give a written reference as to their customer having had a clean bank account (i.e. money laundering) for the past 5 years. (Again this will help to get another third party to process the background check.
* Have the Applicants’ names Gazetted for 30 days pending any objection to their applications (purely to act as a deterrent process).
We hope these WCC proposals will help the Government of Vanuatu to prepare a counter response to the commission to on partial visa waiver ban.
About
World Citizenship Council (WCC) is a non-profit organization for research, development and promotion of the citizenship/ residency schemes throughout the world. The Council will focus on key areas, such as, due diligence and new technologies such as blockchain and will help countries with these issues. The Council also assists governments with government advisory on design and implementation on CBI and RBI schemes (free of charge).
WCC is a startup founded by Mr. Prabhu Balakrishnan in 2017. WCC is now part of Yellow Network of exciting startups for the CBI/RBI industry.
Council Membership is free of charge can be registered at worldcitizenshipcouncil.org
– Members can write WCCM (world citizenship council member) after their name
– Members can use WCC logo or images anywhere in your website
– Feature your company in members directory
– Publish articles in WCC website free
– Members invited for World Citizenship Forum (WCF) events organized by WCC from 2025. We will organize our first event after reaching 200 WCC members.
