Amid further observations as to the lack on monitoring and control over Portugal's Golden Visa programme, 'Transparency and Integrity' has called for its suspension, claiming that the poorly run scheme is an open door to money laundering and organised crime.‘Transparência e Integridade’, the Portuguese affiliate of Transparency International, today denounced what it considers the most obvious risks of the Golden Visa scheme, these being; money laundering, organised crime, the financing of terrorism and tax evasion and the fact the government seems unwilling to enable some open discussion.
"We run the risk of opening the borders of the Schengen area to organised crime," claimed the organisation which has been having trouble getting information from the government.
In February, Transparency and Integrity asked the responsible government departments for some detailed information on the Golden Visas and the scheme’s economic impact. Questions were sent to Foreigners and Borders Service, the Ministry of Economy and the Office of the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs.
The SEF has not responded, the Ministry of Economy referred all issues to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the cabinet of the Secretary of State for Tax Affairs stated that, as for the information requested, “the information is not organised in an archive by the Central Administration.”
The president of the association, João Paulo Batalha, considered the various departments' responses strange, stressing that it is important to have "a public discussion" about the scheme which is difficult to do without data.
According to the last release of headline date from the SEF, since the creation of the Golden Visa scheme, until February 28th 2018, 5,876 Investment Residence Authorisations have been issued, representing a total spend of €3.60 billion. The Chinese, the Brazilians and the South Africans are the top three successful applicants.
The questions that were submitted to the ministries included a request for data on the total number of visas "by geographic distribution, by nationality, by area of activity," as well as, "the number of investments in companies and the number of jobs created.” Answers came there none...
