Saint Lucia offers the most affordable second citizenship in exchange for investment into bonds

If you would like to acquire foreign citizenship via a modest investment into Government bonds with a payback guarantee, you must choose St Lucia! However, you have to act fast as the offer is only available until the end of 2020!

Would you like to ‘buy’ a second passport with ease and quite fast, within only a couple of months? If your answer is “yes”, please give an eye to the Caribbean: five countries in the region offer citizenship-by-investment opportunities. You can file the application for citizenship remotely whichever country you want to apply to. This opportunity has to be appreciated especially in the lockdown times.  

The lowest prices and the lack of bureaucracy make the Caribbean basin countries the best choice for anyone looking to acquire foreign citizenship for money.

However, the least expensive way to acquire second citizenship is to make a non-returnable donation to the Government of the country. That is to say, you can literally ‘buy’ foreign citizenship. And ‘buying’ means saying farewell to your money.

If you do not want to donate between US$ 100,000 and US$ 150,000 in order to obtain citizenship of a Caribbean country but you want a foreign passport anyway, we have great news for you!

Losing money is unnecessary as several countries offer the opportunity to acquire their citizenship in exchange for a returnable investment. This means that you can ‘freeze’ a certain sum of money for a certain period and regain it afterwards.

One of the Caribbean states has recently made this opportunity even more attractive. Here we would like to tell you about the new offer that St Lucia makes.

St Lucian citizenship was especially attractive for wealthy bachelors before the current crisis 

InternationalWealth.info portal team constantly monitors the situation in the investment immigration market, making notes of all changes and interesting offers that appear. Let us talk about a new possibility for those who are seeking to acquire a second passport in exchange for investment.

All countries are experiencing financial problems due to the coronavirus pandemic and Caribbean states are not an exception. This makes them look for some new ways of obtaining additional revenues that would compensate for the losses that their national budgets are making. One of such states is St Lucia.

First of all, the required non-returnable donation in St Lucia is US$ 100,000 while no other country in the world charges less. In addition to the donation, you will have to pay the application processing fees, state duties, and cover the costs of the services that the immigration agent is going to provide to you. (For your information: all countries that run citizenship-by-investment programs require that foreign nationals apply for their citizenship exclusively via a licensed immigration agent.)

This offer is quite attractive for a single applicant. It may be not so attractive for a large family seeking to acquire foreign passports though. It is possible to make a family application for citizenship of St Lucia but an additional donation has to be made for each additional family member.  

You can also acquire citizenship of this Caribbean country by investing into real estate located there or setting up a business company. If you choose this option, however, you will have to carefully assess the liquidity of the real property that you are planning to buy or the perspectives of the business where you are planning to invest.

These investment options do have some risks associated with them. The real property may prove hard to sell in the future and any business can fail, as you know. A non-returnable donation to the Government will make you free from such risks … and your money.

There is another alternative, however, that is as simple as making the donation but it provides for a money return guarantee. This is an investment into Government bonds and St Lucia has had this opportunity available since 2017 when it first launched its citizenship-by-investment program.

This option has been on offer for almost four years now but it has not been particularly popular with foreign investors. This possibility has been seldom used because the required investment amount is rather high at US$ 500,000. Besides, these are zero-interest bonds and the investor has to hold them in his or her possession for five years before regaining the money.

Simple calculations can make this investment option quite unattractive. If you invested half a million dollars in a business that brings you only a 5% profit annually, you would earn US$ 125,000 over five years, which is more than the required non-returnable donation amount.

Moreover, the additional fees and duties have to be added to the five hundred thousand. Besides, in case you are filing a family application, you have to pay extra for each family member that is included in the application for St Lucian citizenship. No wonder the opportunity to invest US$ 500,000 in Government bonds in exchange for a second passport has not been making people very enthusiastic with the view of the fact that there are other more attractive options.

An anti-crisis offer: invest in coronabonds and acquire citizenship of St Lucia for the whole family at a discount

Now things have changed, however. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of St Lucia has issued the so-called coronabonds. Investing US$ 250,000 into coronabonds will make you qualified for St Lucian citizenship. Thus, the required investment amount has been reduced by half. Moreover, the country’s authorities have lowered the payable state duties and waived the due diligence check fees. 

Thus, since recently, you can acquire citizenship of this Caribbean country for a returnable investment of US$ 250,000 and the additional fees that are involved if you are applying with your family are almost negligible. But to be eligible for this opportunity you have to hold the coronabonds in your possession for seven years rather than five.

A small family is not going to have to make large extra payments even if you would like to keep the bonds for five years only. If you have a large family and you want all its members to have St Lucian passports, you can invest US$ 300,000 into coronabonds and keep them for five years while paying little in additional fees.

When St Lucian authorities reduced the required amount of investment into coronabonds and made it twice as little as the required investment in regular bonds (this option is still available, by the way), they made the offer look twice as attractive. Please bear in mind though that this option is going to be available until December 31, 2020 only. So you should not procrastinate if you are interested in this offer.  

Citizenship of St Lucia by investment into coronabonds and benefits foregone

Let us make some more calculations. The coronabonds pay zero interest. This means that the money that you invest into the St Lucian passport is going to bring you no profit at all during five to seven years.

On the other hand, if you invest a quarter of a million in cryptocurrencies, e-commerce, or a promising startup, you can probably make more than a hundred thousand dollars over five years. Suppose you can securely invest into a business that is guaranteed to bring you 10% a year. In this case, you will make US$ 125,000 over five years, which is more than the required donation amount in St Lucia. If this is your situation, it makes better sense to donate US$ 100,000 to the Government of the country than invest into zero-interest bonds in order to obtain the St Lucian passport.

However, if your situation is different and you keep a large portion of your personal capital in the bank, the coronabond option should be interesting for you.

The interest rates that banks (those located in reliable jurisdictions) offer today are far from impressive. Actually, negative interest rates are still applied in some places. Investing in state bonds issued by other countries is not going to make any profit higher than zero either. So if you like to play safe, the special offer that St Lucian Government is making can be of interest to you. You will not lose very much if you take the money out of your Swiss bank account and put it into St Lucia coronabonds. But you will have a second passport!

If you choose to invest into real property instead, you may end up with a profit after five years (there is a requirement that you keep the property in your possession for five years in order to retain the citizenship, similarly to the requirement to keep the bonds for five years minimum). This would be a perfect investment to make without any doubt: you can obtain a foreign passport and make a hefty profit at the same time! But can you be sure that you are not going to end up with a loss after five years of holding the property? Probably not.

The same goes for investment into business, which is also possible in St Lucia. If you are a vivid entrepreneur and if you believe in your ability to make your business in the Caribbean prosper, you should go ahead and use this opportunity to have both the passport and the profit-making business. At the same time, if you look at what is happening to businesses – big and small – all over the world at the current moment, you will want to think twice before putting money into any business venture. Apparently, a disaster can come out of the blue and ruin your company overnight.

The coronabond option, on the other hand, does not have any potential of making a profit for you but it is not going to bring you heavy losses either. This a safe option and what it will bring without fail is a foreign passport.  

Other opportunities for acquiring foreign citizenship

Obviously, acquiring citizenship by investment is not the only path the the foreign passport. It is even not the only fast and inexpensive way of doing that.

Some countries grant their citizenship to foreigners for some outstanding achievement that the latter have. Great scientists, sportsmen, and artists do become citizens of foreign countries from time to time. Many national states will also grant you citizenship if you marry a local person.  

In addition to that, foreign investors can apply for the so-called ‘golden visa’. This is an opportunity to acquire a legal residency permit in exchange for investment that will later (after one to five years) turn into a permanent residence permit and eventually into full citizenship. Portugal, for instance, offers inviting conditions to applicants for a golden visa.

If you want to acquire a second passport fast, however, St Lucia is certainly worth considering as one of the possible options. The country’s requirements to foreign investors are not too hard and if you are a person with a good reputation, you can easily become a citizen of St Lucia within a short timeframe.

At the same time, you should not forget that competition rules the world. If you do not find the coronabond opportunity offered by St Lucia very attractive, you should look in other directions as well. Other countries running citizenship-by-investment programs are also making new offers because the coronavirus crisis is forcing them to do so. There are a few options that you can consider

Our team helps successful entrepreneurs find places in the world where they will be treated in the nicest ways. For instance, we can suggest some low-tax jurisdictions to you whose passport is not so hard to obtain.

A second passport will provide for additional protection and widen your perspectives considerably. Please apply to us for professional assistance in enlarging your collection of foreign passports. You can contact us via email info@offshore-pro.info or use other media such as WhatsApp or our live chat. We will be happy to reply to all your queries!