What are the risks of investment migration? Going beyond the status quo

Surak, Kristin ORCID: 0000-0001-5064-2579 (2025) What are the risks of investment migration? Going beyond the status quo. In: Kochenov, Dimitry, Sumption, Madeleine and van den Brink, Martijn, (eds.) Investment Migration in Europe and the World: Current Issues. Hart.

Text (Misuse of CBI and RBI 240804 (for edited book)) - Accepted Version Repository staff only until 26 December 2025. Download (1MB)

Abstract

Citizenship by investment (CBI, or “golden passport”) and residence by investment (RBI, or “golden visa”) schemes, have come under criticism as potential tools for money laundering, evading taxes, and committing financial crimes. However empirical work on these themes remains limited. This chapter takes as its starting point the most thorough report on these issues to date, “The Misuse of Citizenship and Residency by Investment Programmes” by the OECD/FATF, to ask: What and where are the wider risks involving residence, citizenship, and identity documents with respect to identity laundering, money laundering, and tax evasion or avoidance? To answer this question, the chapter draws on nine years of fieldwork in 19 countries and a new dataset on investment migration. First, it addresses scope issues, identifying several modes of acquiring citizenship or residence based on wealth that carry similar vulnerabilities to investment migration programs and that should be taken into account when developing problem-based approaches to risk mitigation. Next it assesses the scale of actual CBI and RBI offerings, identifying typically ignored cases that are particularly vulnerable to misuse, and it fills in absences in the depiction of the investment migration ecosystem by including powerful but overlooked actors and relationships. Finally, it assesses risks related to identity laundering, money laundering, and tax. Overall, it shows that risks in these three areas operate through building profiles that are legible and acceptable to financial institutions as indica of a person’s relationship to a jurisdiction and that can be used to establish legal “substance” or techniques around “ghosting residence.” As such, a wider range of possibilities for acquiring citizenship or residence based on financial means – beyond merely investment migration programs – needs to be taken into account if financial crime risks are to be fully addressed. Though this chapter paper carries over the risk approach employed in the OECD/FATF report, it closes by proposing that future research and policymaking take a more targeted approach that begins from the analysis of actual harms rather than posited risks.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	© 2025
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HG Finance J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Date Deposited:	14 Apr 2025 15:36
Last Modified:	15 Apr 2025 08:30
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127941

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