The Cypriot government has stripped 222 wealthy investors and their family members of citizenship, according to a Cypriot official.
The decision came as part of efforts to repair her reputation, tarnished by the investment-for-passports “golden” program, which an investigation concluded illegally granted citizenship in hundreds of cases. The government’s deputy spokeswoman, Neofi Parisino, said the figure includes sixty-three investors and one hundred and fifty-nine of their relatives, including spouses, children and fathers.
Throughout its thirteen-year period of operation, before it was suspended, the profitable program repeatedly violated its rules, granting Cypriot passports to unqualified investors, and some of them were reported to have committed crimes and other violations while holding Cypriot citizenship.
A torrent of corruption accusations followed the broadcast of a TV report in 2020 that reportedly showed former Parliament Speaker Demetrius Sylloris and a powerful deputy claiming to a bogus Chinese investor supposedly convicted of fraud in his country that they could circumvent the rules to grant citizenship.
The Cypriot government has categorically denied allegations of corruption, but acknowledged that there were “errors, loopholes and omissions” in how the program was run.
And after the information about the program reverberated and reached the member states of the European Union, the embarrassment prompted the Cypriot government to cancel it.
The passport program generated more than 9 billion euros ($8.7 billion) for the country at a time when it was suffering from a financial crisis in 2013 that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy and led to the closure of its second largest bank.
The program proved particularly attractive to foreign investors, as having a passport from an EU country allowed them to enter the entire bloc.
