Saint Lucia's Citizenship by Investment Programme

 
 
On Tuesday January 26th 2016, Ms. Cindy McLean, the Chief Executive Officer of the Citizenship by Investment Unit, was the guest speaker at the RCGI regular luncheon meeting.  She articulated the basic philosophy of the programme and what are perceived to be the differentiating features.  The basic philosophy is that the jurisdiction must gain economically from every citizenship granted.
  • The scheme targets the elite – minimum net worth of US$3 million
  • There are four routes by which persons can invest for the purposes of obtaining citizenship where other programmes have two or three
  • There are currently five licensed Authorised Agents – who are the only ones who can submit applications for citizenship by investment.The Unit will continue to consider applications for authorised agents.
  • Three internationally accepted due diligence investigators are randomly assigned to conduct due diligence background checks on all applicants over the age of 16.
  • Applicants and their dependents including parents considered under one application
  • Cabinet grants citizenship on recommendation of the CIP board
  • Process takes three months
The first route to acquiring citizenship is a donation of US$200,000 to the Economic Development Fund.  This the simplest and likely to be the most common route;
Secondly an applicant can purchase $500,000 worth of zero coupon Government of Saint Lucia Bonds which must be held for a minimum of five years;
Third, Approved Real Estate Project such as high end hotels or properties that will be utilized for the economic development of Saint Lucia including generating employment.  An investment of a minimum of US$300 thousand is required.  These funds may be placed in an escrow account for the protection of the investor; and
Finally there is the Approved Enterprise Project where the minimum is again US$3.5 million or US$6 million if the investment is by an individual.
For the purposes of marketing the jurisdiction, the world had been segmented as follows:
Middle East and North Africa
Russia/ CIS
Far East
The rest of the world.
Marketing agents have been appointed for two of the three identified markets and they will pay a licence fee but they will also get commissions on each completed application.
Fees will be paid by the applicants for both the application processing fees and for the due diligence.  Government will also receive fees from Real Estate Investment and Enterprise Investment projects.
 
The following article was published in the Saint Kitts Observer recently and may be read by those who are interested in the whole issue of Citizenship by Investment.  Saint Kitts is widely considered the “most successful” program and the article puts this into some sort of context.
Over 10,700 St. Kitts-Nevis economic passports issued in 10 years
 
Between 2005 and 2015, the government of St. Kitts issued/sold 10,777 primary passports through its Citizenship by Investment program. This information was revealed by Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris during Tuesday's (Jan 26) session of the National Assembly. "It has been an onerous task to locate passport records prior to June 2005...The Ministry of National Security has been in touch with the company responsible for the supply of passports and the development, deployment, maintenance, and support for the machine readable passport system. As a result of this, we are in a position to account to the people and country on the number of passports issued to economic citizens or primary passports issued under the CBI program," he explained. In 2005 only six such passports were issued, in 2006- 19; 2007- 75; 2008- 202; 2009-292; 2010- 664; 2011- 1092; 2012-1758; 2013- 2044; 2014- 2329; and in 2015- 2296. PM Harris said nationals from 127 countries across the globe had been beneficiaries of passports through the economic citizenship program, however more so nationals from Asia and Europe. He added that the number of passports issued to any one country ranged from 1 to 2272. "That is the data for a very long time the country had been asking about, and the demand had become huge in the context of the fact that in 2014 the last administration let the country down and let the citizens down," the Prime Minister said, reminding of the May 2014 FinCEN advisory by the US Treasury Department which charged that the Denzil Douglas-led administration was "allowing" illicit actors to participate in the CBI scheme. He also referred to Canada withdrawing its visa-free access to St. Kitts-Nevis citizens entering that country with SKN passports in November 2014, citing serious border security concerns with who was entering Canada using passports gained through the economic citizenship program. "In the context of these exposures by the government of Canada and the government of the United States of America, it was clear that the reckless way in which the past administration managed the citizenship program, had created trouble for us in the international community." Dr. Harris pledged that his Team Unity government would not, by course of its actions, bring the country or its travel document into disrepute or jeopardy.