In the spring of 2026, Latvian authorities uncovered a scheme that became a textbook example of the golden visa industry. An investigation conducted by Latvia’s Financial Intelligence Unit established that more than 20 companies, around 200 foreign investors, and over €10 million in investments existed only on paper. In reality, the money was not working for the economy, it was being returned to investors through chains of transactions. Formally, the requirements of the law had been met; in practice, a system of legal circumvention of migration controls had been created.
This case became the latest episode in a nearly two-decade history of European residence-by-investment programmes. A system that began as a crisis-response tool but evolved into an entrenched infrastructure of corruption. The story of golden visas begins in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, which left European economies, particularly in the south, acutely short of liquidity. Faced with shrinking investment, governments looked for quick fixes.
In 2012, Portugal launched its golden visa programme. By 2013, similar mechanisms had appeared in Spain and Greece, and by 2018–2021, more than 20 such programmes were operating across Europe. The terms were straightforward: an investor puts in money and receives a residence permit, most commonly through the purchase of real estate. In Spain the threshold stood at €500,000; in Portugal at €350,000–€500,000; in Greece at €250,000, later raised to €800,000.
From the outset, a fundamental flaw was built into these schemes: rather than assessing the individual, the system assessed only their capital. Unlike conventional migration procedures, golden visas required neither integration, nor actual residence, nor the creation of a business — meeting a formal financial threshold was sufficient. As a result, Spain issued more than 14,500 such visas between 2013 and 2023, while in Portugal over 90% of all golden visa “investments” went into the real estate market. A paradox emerged: access to the Schengen Area, the banking system, and the prospect of citizenship could be obtained more quickly and easily than through ordinary channels. In effect, the golden visa became a legal means of bypassing rigorous vetting procedures, particularly those of a financial nature.
Over time it became clear that the system attracted not only genuine investors but also those seeking to legitimise capital of dubious origin. In February 2022, following the identification of links to Russian oligarchs and corruption risks, the United Kingdom closed its Tier 1 Investor Visa programme. In 2024, Spain announced the termination of its own scheme, acknowledging the threats posed by economic crime. Malta, which had earned more than €1.4 billion from selling citizenship, faced a 2025 ruling by the EU Court of Justice that effectively classified such schemes as the commercialisation of citizenship. The European Union, deploying a sanctions mechanism for the first time, revoked visa-free access for Vanuatu in 2024 over its golden passport programme. From that point on, the issue ceased to be purely economic and took on a political dimension, since the primary justification for golden visas — attracting investment — had proved questionable in practice.
Research conducted in Portugal showed that foreign investors overpaid for real estate by between €38,000 and €50,000 per property, roughly 10% of the purchase price. This artificially inflated the market and drove up prices for residents. In Spain and Malta, a significant share of properties stood empty, having been purchased not for use but as a formal condition for obtaining residency status. Under such a system, job creation was minimal, investment rarely flowed into the real economy, and the primary beneficiaries were developers, law firms, consultancies, and intermediaries. The “investments” thus amounted to little more than the redistribution of capital within a narrow circle of participants.
The 2026 investigation in Latvia offered the most vivid illustration yet of how the golden visa industry operates. Latvia’s programme, in place since 2010, had long been regarded as one of the most accessible in the European Union. The minimum investment threshold was just €50,000, a residence permit could be obtained in around three months, and there was no requirement for actual residence. These conditions made the programme particularly attractive to foreign nationals, as reflected in the surge in demand: where only 20 applications were filed in 2021, the number had grown to 109 by 2025. But behind this surface-level attractiveness lay a systemic pattern of abuse. The investigation revealed that the logic of “investing” in sums exceeding 10 million had been reduced to a purely formal procedure: an investor transferred funds, received a stake in a company, and on that basis obtained a residence permit, after which the money was returned to them through loans or internal financial operations. These investments carried no real economic substance. The companies created no jobs and showed no genuine business activity. Investors frequently lacked even minimal managerial control, with their participation limited to nominal ownership of shares — sometimes without voting rights. State authorities conducted no meaningful assessment of investment effectiveness; neither employment figures nor company turnover were subject to any systematic analysis. The very concept of contributing to the economy had been replaced by a legal fiction in which money existed solely as a formal basis for obtaining status, not as an instrument of development.
An analysis of European cases reveals that beneath the apparent diversity of golden visa programmes lies a single, repeatable model. Shell companies are created for investors, typically with no independent economic value — their primary function being to serve as a legal wrapper for the investment required to obtain residency. The money then circulates within the scheme itself, passing through the accounts of affiliated entities, redistributed as loans, or returned to investors under various pretexts. At every stage, intermediaries — law firms and consultancies — are on hand to ensure formal compliance with legal requirements and to facilitate transactions. Due diligence procedures are, as a rule, reduced to formality. The assessment of the origin of funds is either superficial or limited to the documents provided, with no meaningful verification. As a result, oversight of capital is effectively weakened, creating fertile ground for the use of golden visas to launder money and circumvent financial supervision. What emerges is an entire infrastructure in which the state acts as a supplier of status and the market as its distributor.
Since 2022, the European Union has moved from criticism to sustained institutional pressure on golden visa programmes, effectively launching a systematic campaign to dismantle or radically transform them. The European Parliament called for a complete end to the practice of selling golden passports and a significant tightening of residence-by-investment schemes. In parallel, the European Commission initiated legal proceedings against individual member states that continued to operate such programmes. These signals quickly fed through to national policy. Several countries abandoned their programmes entirely: the United Kingdom closed its investor scheme in 2022, Ireland followed in 2023, and Spain announced the termination of its programme in 2024. Others, while formally retaining their mechanisms, were compelled to substantially tighten conditions — raising investment thresholds, restricting eligible asset classes, and strengthening vetting procedures.
The core argument of European institutions has remained consistent: golden visas pose direct security threats, create a conducive environment for money laundering, and undermine the institution of citizenship and residency as legal categories. The future of golden visas remains uncertain, but the room for manoeuvre is narrowing. One possible scenario is a transformation into programmes focused on genuine investment — in innovation, start-ups, and job creation. Another is the introduction of uniform, stringent verification standards at EU level. But a third option is increasingly being discussed: the complete abolition of the practice of selling residency.
The history of golden visas has demonstrated clearly how a mechanism designed to attract investment can rapidly become a vehicle for corruption — where capital inflows translate into fictitious transactions, economic development gives way to speculative rises in housing prices, and the selection of investors is reduced to a simple opportunity to purchase access to European jurisdiction. In these circumstances, Europe faces a fundamental dilemma: whether it is permissible at all to commercialise the right to citizenship, transforming it into a commodity to be bought and sold.