The UK’s flagship “golden visa” route designed to reward foreign investors with the right to live in the country was used by 10 Russians who were later placed under sanctions, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said.
(Bloomberg) — The UK’s flagship “golden visa” route designed to reward foreign investors with the right to live in the country was used by 10 Russians who were later placed under sanctions, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said.
The so-called Tier 1 Investor Visa was scrapped last year by then Home Secretary Priti Patel amid concerns that it was being used by criminals, stymieing a route to permanent residence and British citizenship that was popular with wealthy Chinese and Russians. On Thursday, Braverman published a government review of the program — which gave the right to live in the UK to those who invested £2 million ($2.4 million).
The review identified a “small minority” of individuals who used the visa route that were “potentially at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity, and/or being engaged in serious and organized crime,” Braverman wrote. “The route attracted a disproportionate number of applicants from the countries identified in the UK’s National Risk Assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing.”
The review covered 6,312 Tier 1 visas issued between 2008 and 2015 when a requirement to open a UK bank account before applying for a visa was introduced to tighten the system. Braverman said law enforcement are taking “appropriate” action where needed, without providing further information.
Braverman said the review had also uncovered “evidence of high-risk applicants seeking out and exploiting financial institutions that had the weakest Customer Due Diligence controls” and that several “financial institutions associated with multiple high-risk migrants” have since been issued “significant fines” by the Financial Conduct Authority.
The opposition Labour party’s home affairs spokeswoman Yvette Cooper said in an email that Braverman had “provided no answers to the most basic questions” including how many Golden Visas have been revoked, how many recipients have been granted citizenship, and the nature of any “security threat arising from serious and organized criminals who used the route to enter the UK.”
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