St Lucia citizenship for the head of a company

Michael, 53 years old. The founder and chairman of the board of directors of a large city-forming enterprise in one of the cities in Ural.

As we have said, Michael manages a large company, on which the economy of the whole city is built. In addition, he is a competent leader who enjoys well-deserved respect among the inhabitants of the city. He knows many of them personally, as there are employees of his company in almost every family.

As a result, Michael is constantly elected to local government. However, the management of the company takes him almost all the time, so he is physically unable to cope with his duties in elected positions.
In this situation, he was worried that he could not refuse the honor of being elected by citizens. After all, in fact, he had no official reason to refuse them.

Target 1

As a result, Michael decided to focus exclusively on the management of the enterprise. As a reason for refusing to be elected to a public office, he used the Federal Law of the Russian Federation of June 12, 2002 No. 67-FZ “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in the Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation”.

Chapter 4 of Article 3 of this Law states the following: “Citizens of the Russian Federation who have foreign citizenship or a residence permit or other document confirming the right to permanent residence of a citizen of the Russian Federation on the territory of a foreign state are not eligible to be elected for state authorities and local governments ”.

Michael decided to take advantage of this opportunity and get a second citizenship, which freed him from work in elected positions.

Target 2

Another reason why our hero decided to obtain a second passport — visa-free trips to the Schengen countries and the UK. It was here that Michael often had to go about his business. His company imports equipment from these countries and exports the finished product.

Almost every time a business visa took away our client a lot of time, which he could more rationally spend on solving the company’s urgent problems.

When Michael turned to our company, we offered him two options that would completely solve all his problems and, moreover, endow with many rights and powers.

Citizenship of Cyprus

In order to get a Cypriot passport in just 5‑7 months, you need to invest 2‑2.5 million euros in residential or commercial real estate. An option with government bonds and alternative investment funds is also possible. After 3 years, you can sell the property, leaving only real estate worth at least 500 thousand euros for life-long ownership.

Citizenship of Malta

You can get a Maltese passport in 12‑16 months by making a donation of 650 thousand euros to the national fund. Plus you need to buy for 5 years Maltese securities with a total value of 150 thousand euros. And also to buy real estate in Malta worth 350 thousand euros (there is an option with rental housing: for 5 years you need to spend about 60 thousand euros on it).

Although Michael has enough funds for investment under these programs, he considered their conditions redundant, and the registration of citizenship of Cyprus or Malta inexpedient for himself. He is not going to live permanently in the EU. His children by age can no longer participate in programs as financially dependent persons.

As a reasonable alternative, we offered the client the citizenship of one of the Caribbean countries:

• Saint Kitts and Nevis

• Antigua and Barbuda

• Dominica

• Grenada

• Saint Lucia

All these countries give their citizens almost equal rights and impose almost identical requirements on applicants.

Taking this fact into consideration, Michael chose the program with the lowest cost — the citizenship of Saint Lucia. The passport of this country to a single investor as a whole costs 125.5 thousand USA dollars. The amount includes a non-refundable contribution to the national fund and administrative costs. In other words, this entire amount is not returned to the investor.

In the Caribbean programs there is also an option of investing in real estate. They are recurring: after buying a share in a resort object (usually a hotel), the investor has the right to sell this share after 3‑5 years (depending on the country), leaving the passport in his lifetime possession.

Property in Saint Lucia did not interest Michael, as he did not plan to regularly visit the island. Besides, real estate requires supervision, management, and in 5 years it will be necessary to sell it. Therefore, our client chose the option of a non-refundable contribution to the National Economic Fund (NEF) of this country for obtaining citizenship. We entered into a contract with Michael and began working.

During 2 weeks we have fully compiled a package of documents, translated them into English, apostilled and submitted for consideration. Since our hero had all the business management documentation in order, and the sources of income were absolutely transparent, the Due Diligence test took only 60 days, which is a very good result.

After another 2 weeks, after the investment conditions were fulfilled, Michael received a certificate of naturalization and a Saint Lucia passport in our office.

• Michael will not be able to participate in the next local government elections, but this was one of the goals of his second citizenship.

• Now he has focused on managing his business and will be able to spend more time optimizing business processes in the company, which will have a positive effect on the well-being of the employees.

• For business trips to Europe, Michael no longer needs to apply for a visa. He just gets on the plane and, after landing, shows the passport of St. Lucia’s at passport control, which serves as a travel document.

Thus, our client has made his life more harmonious, got the opportunity to devote more time to his business and solved pressing problems with visa-free travel around the world. If you have any questions regarding the registration of the second citizenship, please ask them in the comments or contact our experts.

Immigrant Invest is a licensed agent for government programs in the European Union and the Caribbean.