IMI Podcasts

Kenneth Green of Advance Global Partners joined us on the Mobility Standard podcast this week to talk about:

03:32 - The latest news on Dominica's planned Entrepreneur-visa, which will offer a two-year path to citizenship starting at US$50,000:

"The CBI citizens don't want to reside here, they don't want to come here, they don't even want to visit during the application process. [For the Entrepreneur visa] we've got people that want to come and live here [...] Those are people who are committed to coming to live in Dominica and who are looking to change both their way of life and their operating base for themselves and their families."

• What type of interest is the program getting and from whom?
• Why wouldn't someone who wants Dominican citizenship just apply under the CIP instead?
• Who will be the accredited agents of the program?

30:00 - An update on the Curaçao Investor Permit Program, which is, curiously, an EU golden visa program - in the Caribbean.

 "Your qualification period can be served in any of the Dutch territories. […] So, you can get your permit in Curaçao, and then decide that you want to spend your time in Sint Maarten and qualify, at the end of the fifth year, after taking the Dutch language test, and get Dutch citizenship. And the Dutch passport is now rated third in the world, so it's extremely attractive."

• The new securities investment option;
• How to get Curaçao residence, and a 5-year path to Dutch citizenship, for US$280,000 - or even less;
• On spending your qualification period anywhere in the Dutch Kingdom and qualify for Dutch citizenship in five years;

39:31 - The growing number of firms entering the RCBI government advisory field.

"What we are finding is that [governments] are wary about companies doing 5, 6, or 7 jurisdictions because they are worried about them having the ability to actually craft something specifically suited to their circumstances and needs. […] If you look at the Caribbean; I mean, if one player has four or five different islands, how do you differentiate them?"

• Virtually a duopoly just a few years ago, the RCBI government advisory market has seen 8-10 new entrants recently. What's behind this proliferation of firms seeking government mandates to launch programs?
• How can the new market participants contend when they don't have the track record of the early movers in the government advisory field?
• What are the new programs Kenneth - and others - are working on right now?
• Though no region has longer experience with CBI than the Caribbean, the design and implementation of programs are typically left to European firms. Why is that and is it changing?

Our guest this week on the Mobility Standard podcast was Mohammed Asaria of Range Developments, the Caribbean CBI market’s leading property developer. The agenda during this episode included

• a progress report from his third project in the region, the Six Senses in Grenada;
• the scourge of illegal CBI discounting and how it’s being dealt with;
• why most developers don’t have what it takes to finish their projects; and
• where Range Developments are planning their next projects.

Our guest on the Mobility Standard podcast this week is Philippe May, until recently the Managing Partner of Arton Capital in Singapore who is now a free agent with big - although secret - plans, and strong opinions on current events in the investment migration market. 

EPRS report on EU investment migration programs "a fringe issue"
Commenting on the European Parliament Research Service's recent report, which proposed five different policy options the EU could use to "take action" against investment migration programs in Europe, May dismissed the study as inconsequential.

"First of all, it was not even the European Parliament. It was only a research group of the European Parliament. What competencies does the European Parliament have? Unlike many national parliaments, the competencies of this Parliament are very limited. And their research group? Well, most people in the EU probably don't even know that such a group exists and its competencies are certainly of a consultative nature only. So I'm not too concerned about what it's saying."

EU campaign against CBI is "driven by ideology"
He's also disappointed in Malta's recent decision to share tax residency information on CBI investors with the individual's most recent jurisdiction of tax residency. May surmised that what motivated that decision, which he indicated made little practical sense, was meant to "appease some of those troublemakers in Brussels who always make noise about CBI programs."

If appeasing the EU was Malta's goal, he says, it was unsuccessful because "these people are driven by ideology. They will never give up."

Firms openly offering illegal discounts: "They are not hiding" and "must be exposed"

In an IMI article featuring Philippe May and Sam Bayat last month, the two industry veterans expressed dismay at the continued presence of illegal discounting among CBI agents internationally. In an exclusive interview with Les Khan, head of the Saint Kitts & Nevis CIU, last week, we took the opportunity to ask what was being done to counteract such practices. Khan stated categorically that when evidence of illegal discounting is incontrovertible, the offending firms will get blacklisted.

We asked May what he thought of Khan's statements in the interview.

"I was very happy to hear him say that. One of the major issues we face in our industry with RCBI agents is that we have too many crooks. We have too many unregulated and, I would say, almost unsavory, sometimes criminal elements in the industry. Especially in Red China and in the UAE, you find a lot of rogue agents who lie, who cheat, and who don't give a damn about minimum amounts, about CIUs, who just want to defraud their clients or to undercut prices to make a quick buck. These kinds of actors have to be weeded out and blacklist is one way to get rid of them."

Portugal changes will have negligible effect but Latvia is the world's most underrated golden visa
As the European golden visa market awaits Portugal's upcoming program changes with bated breath, we asked May what effects the reforms would have on the program's competitive position in Europe, as well as on the balance of investor preferences within Portugal's program.

Our guest on the Mobility Standard podcast this week was Mr. Matt Galati, an American immigration lawyer who has made a big name for himself as one of the world’s foremost EB-5 litigation attorneys. We spoke to him about how, and why, he sues various departments of the US government on behalf of his EB-5 clients, as well as why he’s been so successful at it.

We also had Matt explain, in layman’s terms, what’s been going on with the EB-5 regional center program over the last couple of years. Why does the price keep switching back and forth? Why was the regional center program not reauthorized? What legal or regulatory events and dates should we be keeping an eye on to understand what might happen to the program in the next few months? What if there isn’t any reauthorization?

We also spoke about the nature of the dissonance between the EB-5 program’s two main lobby groups, the IIUSA and the EB-5 Investment Coalition. What, specifically, do they disagree about and will they eventually be able to coordinate their work for the benefit of the program?

Now that there’s no regional center program, what are American EB-5 attorneys doing to fill their time? Are they pivoting to other programs? Focusing on different types of visas? 

"We're a nation of laws, in the United States. Litigation is quite common. And while it might seem a little new to immigration, there is an enormous amount of case law […] We've seen an explosion in lawsuits. Not just for myself and my practice but across the board. […] One of the tactics of the previous administration was to purposely slow down the awarding of immigration benefits."

Matt says he believes it was the work of immigration lawyers like himself and his colleagues in suing the government was what made processing times recover last year.

"By filing numerous lawsuits because the agency wasn't doing anything in 2019 throughout most of the year, we finally got the agency moving again."

Katie Ananina, better known by her Twitter handle "Katie the Russian", takes a marketing approach that's different from almost all other investment migration consultants: 

Focusing the entirety of her customer acquisition strategy on Twitter, she finds 100% of her clients through that platform. Addressing an audience almost exclusively composed of relatively young, freedom-loving, government-skeptic crypto-enthusiasts, she's not afraid to employ verbiage that would mortify her typically more punctilious peers in the investment migration industry. 

Her uninhibited and audacious style has allowed the 26-year-old entrepreneur (and former professional sailboat racer who grew up in Chelyabinsk, thousands of miles from the ocean) to quickly build out her company's customer base and her personal brand: Over the last few months, she's made appearances on Fox, CNBC, and a host of other mainstream outlets, and has built a Twitter following of more than 35,000, virtually overnight.

When we asked Katie whether she was being provocative on purpose as part of a PR strategy, she indicated she had not even thought of her marketing approach in those terms, let alone that it was different from that of virtually every other industry service provider.

"It's definitely not some kind of clickbait. It's just how I see my business."

Katie says her tech-team continue to attempt to persuade her to invest in non-organic marketing methods like SEO or pay-per-click marketing, but that she resist such calls:

"I don't want that. I love my audience. I know my audience. I know their pain points, I know their goals, I know their needs. And they trust me because, I believe, I am the most educated on bitcoin-stuff in the migration space. So, when they come to me, I understand their problems. [...] So, I want my audience to be the way they are. It's bitcoiners, it's people who believe in sovereign individualism, who speak the same language, who are comfortable with each other, who trust each other. I don't want cold leads."

Katie also told us her backstory, from growing up in Russia with liberty-minded parents, to joining the Russian national sailing team at the tender age of 11, dropping out of her elite university, experiencing ruble-hyperinflation, having trouble traveling on her Russian passport, to investing in bitcoin, planting flags, buying new citizenships, and eventually helping kindred spirits to do the same.

Many Bitcoin maximalists who have made windfalls from early investments have the lion's share of their portfolios allocated to cryptocurrencies. Because we are still so early in the transition to the new monetary system, however, these investors are loath to exchange their crypto-holdings for other types of assets - such as alternative citizenships - because they consider the opportunity cost to be too high. To address this common quandary in the crypto-community, Katie offers crypto-collateralized loans to provide liquidity to clients who want to avoid liquidating their crypto assets.

"When [my clients] are trying to figure out whether they should go for the real estate or donation option, for my clients, it's 95% donations because of the opportunity cost. For them, freezing $250,000 in real estate for five years instead of buying Bitcoin is like 'what are you talking about?'"

We pointed out that Katie, like Andrew Henderson of Nomad Capitalist, has built a personal brand. Other industry participants typically build the brands of their companies. We discussed some of the pros and cons of building personal brands, such as the ability to gain client trust more rapidly but at the price of losing much of your anonymity. 

We also touched El Salvador's new Bitcoin-denominated residence by investment program, which Katie says she hopes the country will turn into a citizenship by investment program. 

Our guest this week on the Mobility Standard podcast was Sam Bayat, founder of Bayat Legal Services, one of the Middle East's foremost investment migration firms. 

Sam has been active in the investment migration market since the very beginning and we took the opportunity to raise a number of questions best answered with the benefit of three decades of hindsight.

Though he's been nearly three decades in the UAE, Sam's investment migration adventure began in Montreal. That's an origin he shares with many of his peers: Why is it that so many of those company founders who today are big names in the investment migration market all got their start in Montreal? In other words, why is Montreal, in particular, the birthplace of so many leading investment migration firms?

Sam says he’s concerned that the industry as a whole doesn’t have adequate “representation or a more active think-tank to give our perspective on different issues.” But isn’t that what the IMC is doing? Well, Sam has a different take on that and new ideas around what needs to change in investment migration industry associations for them to be truly effective, ideas on which he elaborated during the show. He also explained why he has decided not to join any industry associations for the moment.

“We are more concerned with setting up seminars and talking among ourselves rather than talking to people who are not part of our industry. [...] If Henley and Arton would agree to work together to represent the interests of the industry, and if there were one entity, then I would be a member."

Sam is closely involved in the promotion of North Macedonian citizenship by investment throughout the MENA region. Considering the conspicuous absence of any official mention of the program, we asked him whether we can be confident that there is a government-sanctioned EUR 200,000 citizenship by investment program in North Macedonia. Why is the government not saying anything?

“We have received the first ten approvals, and two of them are my clients," Sam responds. "[…] The biggest problem the promoters of this program have is, basically, the government’s attitude,” he adds, pointing out that the government has been hesitant to adopt best-practice recommendations from seasoned CBI advisors. “It’s Eastern Europe, things are not moving fast and they are not really inclined to change.” Nonetheless, he says he believes that once we see the first several citizenships formally granted, the government of North Macedonia is likely to also become more proactive in their promotion of the program.

Timestamps:

• 02:37 - Why did it all start in Montreal?
• 18:42 - Industry representation and the role of associations like the IMC
• 37:03 - Updates on citizenship by investment in North Macedonia

We had the pleasure of hosting Nestor Alfred, the CEO of Saint Lucia's Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) on the Mobility Standard podcast last week. We covered a wide range of topics, including (timestamped):

• 01:11 - Who is Nestor Alfred? Nestor told us about how, from humble beginnings as the middle child among seven siblings, he was able to rise through the professional ranks in both the public and private sectors thanks to his emphasis on education. He also explains why he chose to leave a successful career in the banking world to help his country run a CIP.
  
  
• 11:34 - Now that Saint Lucia has had a change of government, what can we expect to happen to the CIP? What plans does the new administration have for the program? And does Nestor feel comfortable that he'll be able to continue to lead the CIU?
  
  
• 19:53 - What are the latest trends for the Saint Lucia CIP? What's happened to application volumes and investments in the last year? Are approvals up? What's changed in terms of applicant nationality distributions?
  
  
• 26:02 - How was the Saint Lucia CIU able to go from one of the Caribbean's slowest CIUs to its most efficient? We asked Nestor about what has changed in the CIUs work to bring about the turnaround.
  
  
• 39:32 - What's happening with CIPA? Nestor's peers elected him chairman of the Citizenship by Investment Program Association nearly three years ago. He made a number of attempts to more closely integrate the five Caribbean programs, such as regards sharing of information and due diligence work, but also in terms of pricing. Few tangible results from these efforts have materialized, however, and we questioned Nestor as to what's holding CIPA back.

Some highlighted excerpts from Nestors answers:

• On whether he worries for the future of the program under the new government: "At this stage, I don't have that kind of fear, no."
  
  
• On whether he will stay on as the head of CIU: "This is not within my purview but within the purview of the new government and, therefore, I would not want to speculate on this and there's not really much I can say about it at this point in time."
  
  
• On recent trends in the program's application volume and nationality distribution: "It has been, absolutely, our best year in regard to application growth. And, surprisingly, though the Middle East and China have always held the top two spots in terms of applicant nationalities, as of now, the US has actually taken over the number two spot."

Ashish Saraff says he's confident both that India will soon allow dual citizenship and that the Indian investment migration market will become the world's largest within a decade.

In this episode of the Mobility Standard, we spoke to Ashish Saraff of Aretha Capital Partners. Himself an Indian by birth, Ashish has, for many years, been intimately involved in developing the Indian investment migration market, initially focusing on EB-5 and more recently on investment funds in European golden visa jurisdictions.

We raised a number of questions we had about what Ashish says he is confident will become the single largest investment migration market in the world within the next decade, including:

• Why isn't India a bigger market for investment migration? On a per-capita basis, RCBI participation in India is far lower than among the other subcontinental economies, like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Why aren't Indians equally interested?
• Indian outbound investment grew 10x in the six years to 2019. Why didn't investment migration grow at a similar clip?
• What's the right way to enter the Indian IM market? An enormously diverse, regionalized country means that few one-size-fits-all solutions are available for those who wish to penetrate the market. What works in Mumbai may not work in Bangalore, and vice versa. Should you focus on a B2B strategy that involves building relationships with local service providers and institutions, or are you better off going directly to market with a B2C approach?
• What are the push factors motivating Indians to invest in second residencies and citizenships? Is it true that the prospect of taxing non-resident Indians are driving demand? What about pollution and health concerns?
• How does the restriction on dual citizenship quell demand? Is it possible we'll soon see dual citizenship legalized in India?
• The Indian Supreme Court has ruled that foreign lawyers cannot give legal advice in India. What constitutes legal advice? Can foreign RCBI specialists still operate legally in India?

Our guest this week was Micha-Rose Emmett, long-time CEO of CS Global Partners. 

We started off on a personal level, by asking questions designed to tell us more about who Micha-Rose is. She answered questions about how she got started in investment migration and the road to where she is today. We discussed some of the issues closest to Micha’s heart - global citizenship, freedom, female empowerment, and so on. She also talked about what it was like becoming a mother while being the CEO of a major company and how she handled that transition.

Micha’s been in investment migration for 15 years already and we wanted to hear if this opportunity for longitudinal observation of the market had led her to draw any conclusions about what macro trends characterize the current chapter of investment migration’s history, and what’s different in the market now compared to in previous chapters.

Born and raised in Namibia and commercially active in Africa for a long time, Micha understands the continent better than most in this business. We wanted to take advantage of that to raise some of the questions we have about investment migration in Africa. What's next for investment migration in Africa? Is it really the next big market for investment migration or will it remain a continent that just has great potential? 

We questioned Micha about how we might promote the maturation of the investment migration market. Ours is still a relatively immature line of business. It has low barriers to entry, it's mostly unregulated, and isn't capital-intensive. There's no shortage of practitioners who cut corners or tell half-truths to close a deal. Are there any industries that are similar to, but ahead of, investment migration that we could use as a model or template for industry development? Perhaps one that has had to overcome similar obstacles in the past?

How has Micha’s own company changed as a consequence of the pandemic? 

What lessons did the pandemic teach her and her colleagues at CS Global? What pandemic impacts, negative and positive, drove organizational changes? Are more of her colleagues working remotely and, if so, does Micha expect them to return to the office? Does she think the world of business travel and conference circuits, as we knew it, will return?

Finally, Micha answered a number of questions from the audience, including whether she will consider entering the Turkey CIP market, what junior career paths are available for those who want to get a start in the investment migration business, and whether dropping company margins and lowered program prices will squeeze companies out of the industry. 

Our guest this week is Yuri Lau, a Dutch national who has been living in Argentina for the last 16 years and who is now working on investment migration solutions tailored for crypto-investors through the company he co-founded; Citizens of Bitcoin.

We spoke to Yuri about Citizens of Bitcoin and how he aims to tailor mobility packages specifically suited to crypto-investors. We also discussed how the increasingly large share of global assets that are non-tangible and geographically non-fixed opens up opportunities for sovereign individuals to bargain with states and to make countries compete for them. 

Ahmad Abbas brought up a potential new incentive scheme for high-performing employees of multinationals: Company sponsorship of CBI applications through the bond investment options of the Caribbean. We explored the feasibility of such solutions and how they would work in practice.

Citizenship by descent solutions is becoming an increasingly recognized - and utilized - avenue to enhanced freedom of travel and settlement. We ask: Why is that market only now getting so much attention and does it represent a threat or an opportunity to investment migration?

Finally, Rogelio suggests DNA test-kit companies, like 23andMe, should become RCBI-introducers by informing their users, whenever European ancestry is discovered during analysis, that they may qualify for citizenship in the EU. 

All of that, and a great deal more, in today's episode of the Mobility Standard.

Timestamps

• 06:30 - Citizens of Bitcoin
• 08:10 - The virtualization of assets and how it enables sovereign individuals
• 13:00 - The complementarities of monetary and physical mobility
• 14:20 - Competition between states for the best citizens and free individuals bargaining with states
• 19:00 - Citizenship as employee performance bonus: Companies sponsoring CBI applications through the bond route
• 26:05 - Tailoring investment migration to crypto-investors; What are their pain points?
• 29:00 - Citizenship by descent/ancestry: Why is this market only now growing quickly and is it a threat or an opportunity for the investment migration industry?
• 37:45 - Rogelio gives away his best business ideas for free.