The real underbelly of the passport business: how to avoid fraud

Antwort Law has been successfully operating in the international legal consulting market for 8 years, providing support to clients, including in complex issues of obtaining a residence permit, permanent residence and citizenship. In this article, we would like to highlight the reality of the prospect of becoming a citizen of a foreign country “quickly and for money” and share our experience for those who are serious about obtaining a second passport.

Over the past few years, more and more people, and especially entrepreneurs, are turning to various agencies in order to obtain citizenship of Western countries. Indeed, there are enough advertisements with flashy headlines and promising offers in this area, but you should not trust most of the offers in this market.

The passport business market is full of scammers ready to deceive gullible clients. Such agencies create the illusion of reliability through professionally designed websites, beautiful offices, secretaries and employees in them, simulating vigorous activity, behind the facade of which are deceivers who want to get an advance from you without providing real services.

The entire calculation of such companies is based on the assumption that the vast majority of defrauded clients, despite significant amounts of advances starting from several tens of thousands of dollars, will not litigate in court or informally resolve problems through third parties. Most likely, they will prefer not to get involved and not waste their nerves, money and time due to the sensitivity of the request, which often lies in the gray area of ​​the law.

If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Real citizenship services require time and significant costs. It is worth contacting only trusted specialists with long experience who will not make loud and extremely optimistic promises to resolve all issues through their special secret contacts.

At the moment, for Russians who want to leave the Russian Federation and obtain another citizenship, there are only two “working” options left for obtaining citizenship by investment - Vanuatu and Turkey. However, in these countries, obtaining a passport is associated with many difficulties. In addition to the one-time, rather large costs of purchasing real estate (from $400,000 in Turkey) or investing, investors have to overcome many problems due to additional due diligence checks, tightening control over foreign investments, and the need to constantly maintain investments for several years.

We recommend to our clients to obtain citizenship through, albeit a longer, but the safest and most reliable way - naturalization, namely obtaining citizenship through a residence permit and permanent residence.

We also offer a full range of legal services in the field of migration and citizenship:

• Consultations and document verification: we will help you collect and check all the necessary documents for applying for residence permit/permanent residence/citizenship.
• Legal support: we will ensure full compliance of your case with local and international legislation.
• Optimization of tax obligations: we will provide recommendations for optimizing taxes when obtaining citizenship.
• Visa support: we will help you obtain visas for you and your family, ensuring legal stay and work in the new country.