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Nearly 100 people were rejected from the Irish Golden Visa Scheme after filing an application to the government’s secretive program.
According to the Independent, new statistics also showed that 500 people who sought to acquire residency in Ireland through the Golden Visa Program withdrew their applications before they could be processed by the Department of Justice, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
However, despite widespread concerns regarding the CIP, the department is refusing to provide further details regarding €1.2 billion invested in Ireland by mostly nationals of China seeking residency.
Ireland’s Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) was abolished last month. Such a decision was confirmed by the Minister of Justice, Simon Harris.
The Minister stressed that the program has been under review for quite a period while adding that strong advice was introduced to him, which led him to officially abolish this scheme.
He stressed that reviews had focused on the sustainability of this program, taking into account cultural as well as social and economic issues; still, he stressed that the scheme was out of its time.
“Taking all of this into account and informed by both internal and external reviews, I have recommended that it is now time to close this program to new applications,” the Minister said, based on a report provided by RTE.
Authorities in Ireland introduced the IIP program in 2012, allowing wealthy foreign nationals to acquire residency if they made an investment in the country and thus helping the increase the economic sector. In addition, since its introduction, the scheme has brought to Ireland a total of €1.17 billion.
Foreign investors interested in benefiting from this program were obliged to have a personal wealth of €2 million or over. In contrast, in order to acquire residency from this program, wealthy foreign nationals were obliged to make an investment of at least €1 million in this country for a minimum of three years.
Previously, a report provided by the Irish Times noted that Ireland’s Golden Visa saw an increase in the number of requests in the last months of last year, the majority of them from Chinese nationals.
Despite the fact that it significantly helped the country’s economy further increase, the scheme was often involved in many unlawful affairs, such as money laundering and corruption.
In addition to Ireland, Portugal recently announced that it terminated its Golden Visa Scheme as part of efforts to tackle the housing crisis. At the same time, Spain’s leader of the left-wing political party Más País, Íñigo Errejón, said that he submitted a bill to Congress through which he wants to abolish the Spanish Golden Visa Program by the purchase of a residential property.
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