Gold Visas property purchases cleared €21 million of real estate in September despite the procedure being ineffective, according to those running using it.
"Unfortunately, the pressure of the judicial investigation led to the regulations became more bureaucratic, making the procedure ineffective" said Acacio Pereira, the president of the Association of Inspectors of the Foreigners and Borders Service.
Golden Visa numbers have fallen by more than half since the corruption scandal and subsequent Operation Labyrinth which saw 11 initial arrests.
The Chinese and others have been as keen as ever to get into Europe via Portugal and the SEF now has a backlog of over 4,000 applications.
The number of pending cases was confirmed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MAI), which supervises the SEF, and the speed that the Visas travel through the system safely can be described as snail-paced.
According to a source close to the process, applications for Golden Visas lodged in January 2015 will only begin to be processed in January 2016, exactly one year after they were received by the SEF.
The Ministry has several excuses offered by Constança Urbano de Sousa; "there are several reasons for the slowdown in the decision process for Golden Visas," among them "the decentralisation of case handling as a result of internal recommendations from the General Inspectorate, and "the treatment of Golden Visas on equal terms compared to other processes," i.e. nobody in charge is bothered.
The excuses include the “suspension of the system for a month due to legislative changes." Constança Urbano de Sousa certainly has no plan to speed things up, nor does anyone it seems as the Chinese, fed up with the wait, head off to Spain and other European countries in search of their tax breaks.
The new head of the SEF said he is trying to speed things up by telling applicants sooner that documents are missing and by telling slow and slipshod lawyers to get a move on.
Following Operation Labyrinth launched in 2014 which led to the arrest of several senior public administration executives and the resignation of the minister in charge, Miguel Macedo, an audit showed the procedures needed several fundamental changes, many of which caused more delays, not fewer.
Before the changes authorised in 2015 and "despite staffing constraints, inspectors from the SEF had analysed applications and issued thousands of Golden Visas in an accurate and reliable process."
The pace of new applications for Golden Visas from Chinese citizens, the majority of requests are from the Chinese, has slowed down as a result of the strong devaluation of the Chinese stock market and ‘investment flight’ to Spain and other European countries where they realise the bureaucratic systems are simpler and certainly quicker.
Estate agents’ association APEMIP has warned of the damage to the national economy of delays in processing Golden Visas but since the launch by the then Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas in late 2012, 2,693 Golden Visas have been issued corresponding to an investment of €1.6 billion.
With a current backlog of 4,00 applications, this figure could by now have been so much more.
This scheme is a shambles, poorly designed when launched by Portas, who crowed about it when things were going well, and then distanced himself when it was shown that many of those in charge of running it were helping themselves.
The redrafting of the scheme in 2015 led in part to the current year-long delays in processing the forms and those in charge of the process seem not interested in speeding things up.
Then there is the moral issue as Golden Visa foreigners pay zero tax while Portugal's workers pay through the nose to keep the Troika happy and the government in new cars.
Maybe SEF personnel are aware that they pay tax every month while those who they are welcoming to the country will be paying zero tax on their world wide incomes.
