The success or failure of any of the economic citizenship programmes of the country depends on various factors, and Due Diligence is one of them. Due Diligence directly or indirectly contributes towards the success or the failure of citizenship programmes, irrespective of the country’s demographic position.
Currently, the factor has been affecting the countries that have or had a poor scrutinizing procedure for the applicants.
Evidently, the Caribbean region plays a crucial role in guiding the other countries across the globe which offer economic citizenship programmes to high-net-worth citizens. This is because the region possesses a multi-layered due diligence system.
More than half of the countries in the Caribbean region have Citizenship by Investment programmes that follow rigid due-diligence procedures. These procedures are, however, carried out by a third-party organization, such as US’s Thomson Reuters, UK’s FACT, and many more renowned agencies.
The authorities charge an extra fee of $7,000 during the citizenship application for the due diligence. The Caribbean authorities offer to provide a safe and secure future to people who go for economic citizenship, and for the same, the region included some of the multi-tiered due diligence regimes in their programme directives.
These regimes are mentioned below:
1.) Background Checks – The background check is a procedure that is followed by an individual or company to verify and ‘check’ the identity of one individual. It also allows them to inspect or examine the preciseness of one’s past activities, including criminal record, education and employment. It also included worldwide checks on anti-terrorism financing and anti-laundering before giving consent to the applicant.
This regime is usually followed when a person applies for economic citizenship. Under this, multiple ways are followed to carry out the checks. These ways include a personal reference by renowned firms and a detailed database search.
2.) Funding Source – It is one of the regimes under the process of due Diligence. This function is to verify that “From where the money for the transaction has come from”. It is followed during the time of the transaction of the application.
3.) Criminal Record – Under this, the criminal record of the applicant are checked closely, to make sure that he or she is not included in any kind of illegal or criminal activity in the past. In some of the cases, the procedure is completed with the help of police verification.
4.) Visa Refusal – It is one of the essential regimes under the process of due diligence as the rejection and selection of the application extremely depends on this. If the applicant’s visa is refused by any of the countries which provide visa-free access through Citizenship by Investment, then he or she will not be allowed to become a citizen of the Caribbean region and the application will be rejected during the vetting process.
There are specialized firms that perform all these checks. These firms carry out independent due diligence on citizenship applications where several agencies are involved, including Interpol, inter-governmental agencies, joint regional communication Centre and partners in other countries such as the US, Canada, UK, and others.
Let us inform you that there is one more procedure that includes the form of band nationality policies; under this, the people of the countries where due diligence cannot be performed are excluded.
In the case of economic citizenship, a single application costs more than $150,000, which is not affordable for any common citizen across the world. Most of the people with economic citizenship visit the European nations either for tourism or shopping, which will give a boost to the country’s economy.
Reportedly, the checks carried by the agencies like Thomson’s Reuters or FACT are more stringent than the checks by the government itself.
Vanuatu’s Economic Citizenship Programme:-
Lately, the European Commission, or EU Commission, criticized Vanuatu’s economic citizenship programme. The programme was criticized following its proposal for the suspension of a visa-free travel agreement due to its inter-governmental due diligence of applications.
Now, the people, who have received Vanuatu’s passport since May 2015, will not be allowed visa-free travel across the European countries. After the ban was imposed, the EU executive stated that the venting system of the country was risky and there wasn’t sufficient screening during the application procedure.
