National programmes for the award of citizenship, residence permits and tax domiciles to foreign investors must respect the legal standards set by the Council of Europe, the Committee on Migration underlined today, and Member States should do their utmost to ensure that “investment migration does not become a tool for international money laundering”.
Adopting a draft resolution based on the report prepared by Aleksander Pociej (Poland, EPP/CD), parliamentarians said that governments “should not attract investment migration by offering an undue tax shelter for assets and revenue generated abroad”. In that sense, member States sign and ratify without further delay the pertinent Council of Europe conventions and comply with the respective recommendations contained in country reports by GRECO and MONEYVAL.
Any investment, especially if it comes from abroad and occurs in the context of investment migration, should be made “with the highest levels of transparency and traceability, including identification of the natural or legal persons on whose behalf or in whose name such investment is made, as well as identification of the origin or source of the investment”. Parliamentarians called on governments to set up domestic rules and procedures for the withdrawal of citizenship, “where it has been awarded through corruption or the investment of proceeds from crime”.
PACE
