Inside Dominica: a small Caribbean island with golden passports for the rich.

Since 1993, the Caribbean island nation of Dominica has allowed foreigners to acquire citizenship in an effort to attract more investment in the local economy. The price for a passport is $100,000 invested in a government fund or $200,000 in a government-approved real estate development - a cheap proposition for billionaires and wealthy investors looking for a better travel document or a way to leave their home countries.

The Dominica government calls the program the "fastest, longest lasting and most affordable" citizenship through investment scheme in the world. They also claim to be checking the "due diligence" of all investors. But a new international investigation dubbed "Caribbean Passports: Dominica" has found that the country issued passports to at least three Russian oligarchs who were later sanctioned and a controversial crypto investor now wanted in Singapore.

Joint investigation

The Joint Investigation is a collaboration between the International Organized Crime and Corruption Project, a U.S. nonprofit government accountability organization and more than a dozen media outlets, including Forbes. It began after a U.S. government accountability organization obtained the names of about 7,700 people who had acquired Dominica passports in recent years. These names were gathered from official documents released by the Dominica government, as well as leaks and corporate documents. They were then analyzed by journalists from more than 20 countries.

Reaction from Dominican authorities

Representatives of Dominican authorities did not respond to multiple requests for comment. However, at a press conference held on September 18, the country's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit condemned what he called "an attempt by some in Dominica to destroy the Citizenship by Investment program" by "colluding with international journalists and some regional journalists to spread numerous misinformation about the program in an attempt to destroy it. "

Citizenship-by-investment programs

Dominica is not the only country offering citizenship through investment. At least four other Caribbean islands offer similar programs, as well as several countries in Europe and the Middle East, including Turkey. But what sets Dominica apart is that it has long been criticized by Western governments because of its lax attitude to checking whether suspected criminals and politically exposed persons who do not obtain the country's passports are sanctioned.

Revenues for the Dominica government

Despite the counter-versions, the program has been a huge source of revenue for the Dominica government since its inception in 1993. Skerrit, who has been prime minister since 2004, announced in 2020 that the country had raised $1.2 billion from the program in the last three years alone. In fiscal year 2021-2022, for which complete data is available, Dominica received EC$459 million ($170 million) from the Citizenship by Investment program - 54% of total revenue. Interest in the program is growing: according to Henley & Partners, a London-based law firm that helps clients obtain residency and citizenship through investment, requests for Dominican citizenship through investment are up 729% in 2020, 131% in 2021, and 13% in 2022.

The benefits of Dominican citizenship

Even without access to the UK, Dominican citizenship offers a key advantage for suspicious individuals facing sanctions or looking for a way to leave their home countries: a 'clean' document for travel. Dominican passports allow visa-free entry, visa on arrival or e-visa to 132 countries, including China, the European Union and Singapore.

Russian oligarchs and other controversial figures

Forbes has discovered that three sanctioned Russian oligarchs have obtained Dominican passports, including wealthy real estate tycoons Goda Nisanov and Zarakh Ilyev, who were granted citizenship in 2017 - five years before they were sanctioned by the UK in 2022. (Nisanov's wife and children also received Dominican passports, and Nisanov was also sanctioned by the U.S. last year.) Steel magnate Alexander Abramov obtained a passport for himself, his wife and children in 1996, more than a decade before he was sanctioned by Britain in 2022.

Representatives for Nisanov, Ilyev and Abramov did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

For Nisanov, the Dominican passport was another addition to the collection of citizenships he already held. According to sanctions lists in the US and UK, Nisanov is also a citizen of Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Russia. Last year, Portuguese newspaper Público reported that Nisanov was also seeking Portuguese citizenship, citing a source in the country's justice ministry. Cyprus began revoking the passports of several sanctioned Russian oligarchs following Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year, but it is unclear whether they removed Nisanov's passport.

Another oligarch, real estate billionaire and former president of the Russian Judo Federation, Vasily Anisimov, was granted Dominican citizenship in 2000. A source close to Anisimov confirmed to Forbes that he has a Dominican passport, but said he has not used it since the early 2000s, when he became a Croatian citizen. The source also claimed that Anisimov renounced his Russian citizenship in 2022, but did not provide evidence for this claim.

Meanwhile, the son of Greek oil and gas billionaire Vardis Vardisogiannis, Yannis Vardisogiannis, was granted Dominican citizenship along with his wife and children in 2013. Representatives for Vardisogiannis did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

Numerous other controversial figures have also taken advantage of the scheme to obtain a second passport. One of them is Kyle Livingston Davis, co-founder of former cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which filed for bankruptcy in July 2022. Davis obtained Dominican citizenship in 2009, three years before Three Arrows was formed.

Since then, Davis has also obtained passports in countries other than his native United States. In an August filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Davis said he stopped living in the U.S. in 2013 and renounced his U.S. citizenship in December 2020, a month before taking Singaporean citizenship in January 2021. In a subsequent filing, his lawyers in the U.S. said Davis also holds an Italian passport obtained in 2017, but none of the filings mentioned Davis' Dominican passport. Davis' representatives in Singapore did not comment on the Dominican passport requests.

Limitations on obtaining Dominican citizenship

With a population of 75,000, the number of naturalized Dominican citizens may soon exceed the number of residents on the island. The government does not regularly publish the number of citizenship applications approved, but Skerrit, the prime minister, disclosed in 2020 that 5,814 applications were approved between 2017 and 2020. This is not consistent with the program's fees: the Opposition Leader of Dominica recently announced a figure of 46,615 naturalizations from 2016 to 2023 in a document published by Swiss journalists based on official revenue data provided by the Dominica government. This number represents more than half of the total population of the island.

Some restrictions on who can obtain Dominican citizenship.