The Government of Vanuatu to review citizenship by investment scheme, which is currently underway and will be completed by March 2020 before elections.
A Taskforce already appointed by the Prime Minister comprising of technical government officials to look into this citizenship program and and prepare a report soon to advise the government with feedback from people on whether to continue the program or not. The report will also address effective screening and assessing of applicants, improvising and strengthening processes for dealing with non-citizens and clearly detailing how to manage the benefits of this program.
The final decision on the future of the Vanuatu citizenship program will be taken based on comments from people, the government and citizenship office.
“I believe it is time for the government to conduct a review of the citizenship program, consult the people and then decide on the future of the program,” Minister Napuat told Daily Post.
“We are getting some negative implications as a result of the lack of due diligence on applicants to get citizenships, which is affecting our bilateral relations with other countries,” said Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for foreign affairs, in an interview to Financial Times.
The Foreign minister also said that Vanuatu is not happy with the level of due diligence and structure of the citizenship program.
This year a major scandal broke out in Vanuatu, with the country deporting 6 chinese nationals, four of those held Vanuatu passports (revoked later) for being involved in Plus Token $2.6bn cryptocurrency scam.
The Vanuatu Citizenship scheme has generated over $200 million in revenues and chinese are the biggest market for Vanuatu. The majority of those who acquired passports are from Asia according to Public Accounts Committee (PAC). Over 4000 passports were issued in 2018 and over 1000 families received passports in 2019.
Vanuatu has channeled VT3 billion ($25m) citizenship revenues into infrastructure, rural roads, airports. A further VT3 billion ($25m) of outstanding severances of public servants, teachers, nurses, police officers
Foreigners acquiring Vanuatu citizenship under investment do not have rights to vote, or hold positions in Government offices.
Vanuatu recently upgraded its passport by adding more security features to improve national security matters. The validity of passports were also upgraded to 10 years
