St Lucia passport: how to collect documents properly

Our Client

Maria (35) built her career in the financial sector, where she made a great progress, becoming a highly qualified specialist. Last year Maria decided to start working for herself. She planned to start her own business and was in a process of developing several Internet projects. However, she lacked only one thing for successful launch of her own business...

Problem

Maria’s business requires regular business trips abroad – both to the Schengen area and Asia. The need to apply for visas time after time became a serious obstacle, while her business tasks required immediate solutions. Maria addressed to our company so that we help her solve this problem.

Goals and Objectives

Only citizenship of European or Caribbean countries could solve Maria’s problem. For example, passport of Cyprus gives the opportunity to travel to 158 countries without visas. And passport of St. Kitts and Nevis opens the doors to 124 countries. Our goal was to select the most suitable option for Maria.

Our client immediately gave precedence to Caribbean citizenship over European passports, since she didn’t plan to spend a substantial sum of money on the registration. Thus, we only had to choose a suitable country.
Maria’s case was compounded by one important circumstance, which could become a serious obstacle. As it is known, Caribbean countries conduct a thorough Due Diligence check before issuing citizenship. It covers applicant’s financial situation and income source. The migration services also request detailed information about all members of applicant’s family.

At the beginning of our cooperation, our client didn’t have any permanent source of income and was officially unemployed, while her funds weren’t sufficient. Besides, Maria didn’t keep in touch with any of her relatives and didn’t have enough information about them. The lack of data on applicant’s relatives in an application form is a serious problem, and we had to think how to get an approval on obtaining citizenship without this data.

Thus, we had to solve a number of challenging tasks:

• to choose the most suitable option for Maria among Caribbean investment citizenship programs;
• to substantiate all Maria’s life circumstances when submitting documents, in order to avoid additional requests for information from the government bodies of a host country;
• to obtain an approval on granting citizenship.

Finding Solution

Initially, Maria reached out to us at the end of 2016. At that time, she planned to obtain Saint Lucia citizenship, as she had travelled there on vacation twice and fell in love with this island. Maria was ready to start the procedure. However, she was deterred by the requirement established by the St. Lucia government to provide a proof of applicants’ funds in the amount of at least $3 million. Also, all documents had to be sent to the island in the original form for consideration of an applicant’s candidacy. Maria was not ready to surrender her documents even for a while.

However, as early as January 2017, our client got good news from the country she was in love with. The government of Saint Lucia announced that it had canceled the obligation for investors to disclose their funds in the amount of at least $3 million. And it also started accepting notarized, apostilled and translated to English copies of documents instead of the originals.

The very procedure of obtaining the citizenship became easier. Since early 2017, St. Lucia no longer requires fingerprints and medical tests to be submitted for the application. And the amount of investment for this program is one of the smallest in comparison with other Caribbean countries - $100 thousand. Only Dominica (and in the recent past Antigua and Barbuda) can compete with St. Lucia in the cost of citizenship, but submitting fingerprints and undergoing medical tests are mandatory there.

Cooperation

We called Maria and told her this good news. The very next mo ing she came to our office to sign an engagement letter. Immediately, our specialists started preparing a package of documents and collecting information for Maria’s application.

We went to considerable lengths, checking up on important details of Maria’s bio in order to represent our client at her best in the eyes of commission that would consider her candidacy for approval.

Our lawyers:

• prepared Maria’s detailed CV
• estimated her assets
• created cover letters describing the sources of our client’s funds
• drew up and notarized an affidavit explaining reasons why Maria was unable to provide Saint Lucia government agencies with any information about her relatives. Given the fact that Maria knew nothing about her relatives, our lawyers had to make efforts in order to explain these circumstances. There is a corresponding box in the questionnaires and this data must be provided.

One of Maria’s important requests was to speed up the process of obtaining St. Lucia passport, since her business was about to start. Her business partners in various countries were ready to begin cooperation with her. Maria needed to legally register her business projects in accordance with her new status.

As the result, our lawyers collected all the information and documents, and handed them over to the government bodies of Saint Lucia in less than 2 weeks.

Progress Made

In 2.5 months we received the approval. All our expectations were justified, and the information provided was sufficient – the government of Saint Lucia did not request any additional data. We managed to convince the commission!

Now Maria’s life has changed greatly:

• she launched her business and runs it successfully;
• she travels to any country she needs, having no problems with visas;
• if necessary, Maria will be able to change her tax residency and optimize her taxes;
• potentially, she can transfer her business registration to Saint Lucia and pay minimum taxes there;
• our client can spend her vacations on the best Caribbean beaches, while feeling at home.

If you are planning to obtain citizenship or residence permit abroad and you want to see positive changes in your life, feel free to contact us. We will find a tailored solution, while our experience allows going through the entire procedure without mistakes and within the shortest possible time. Read our other cases and subscribe to our blog updates.