“The investment program in exchange for residence permits is being closed!”
“The State Treasury has been calling for over 5 years to close the unprofitable for the state ‘investors’ program, where a foreign citizen purchases government bonds, receives a temporary residence permit, and after five years returns the invested money and obtains the right to apply for permanent residence. Over these years, the immigration law has been amended more than 20 times, yet the Ministry of the Interior has not eliminated the corresponding article. We will continue to investigate - who prevented this from happening! - writes Janis Dombrova (National Alliance), head of the parliamentary investigative commission on migration on social media.
“The ‘investors’ program, which provided the opportunity for foreigners to deposit money into a deposit account for five years, receive a temporary residence permit, return the money after five years, and apply for permanent residence, will finally be closed when we drew attention to this program. This program likely contributed to problems in the banking sector of Latvia with deposits from non-residents of unclear origin, which led international organizations to oppose Latvia's financial sector several years ago.
We will continue to assess the investments of ‘investors’ in capital companies. The Ministry of Economics emphasized the importance of this program but could not name a single successful enterprise that emerged thanks to this program. At the same time, the UDG noted that foreigners use this program to create fictitious companies. 10 ‘investors’ invest 50,000 in the authorized capital, buy real estate through a company, receive a temporary residence permit, and after five years can sell the company or its property and apply for permanent residence.
Under all these programs, residence permits were mainly obtained by citizens of Russia.
It is clear that a number of harmful programs for the country have been successfully supported by lobbyists. This has allowed these programs to exist for a long time,” the deputy laments.
