Removal of UK ‘Golden Visas’

U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel announced to scrap the “Golden Visa” programme for millionaire investors, in a bid to cut down on fraud.

Highlights

• UK Golden Visas programme will be removed with immediate effect.
• The removal of Tier 1 investor visa “is just the start of UK’s renewed crackdown on fraud and illicit finance”.
• This move is followed by a Home Office review into visas that were already granted under the program and implemented as government seeks to curb the influence of Russian money.
• British government started the review in 2018, after the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. This incident also led to a deterioration in relations between the Kremlin and the U.K.

Data on Investors visas

As per Home Office data, there were around 1,400 investor visas issued between 2015 and 2020. Furthermore, a Parliamentary report from 2020 notes that, there had been exploitation of ‘investor visa program’. It offered ideal mechanisms for illicit finance to recycle through London ‘laundromat’.”

The UK Golden Visa program offers wealthy foreigners a path to residency, in case they have invested more than 2 million pounds in the U.K.