Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa

NEW Investment Options – Golden Visa – Portugal Investor Visa

Golden Visa Residence Card Sample

Golden Visa Residence Card Sample

We are now happy to announce that submissions for the new investment options on Golden Visa are already 100% active and we are now in conditions submit your application. Please check bellow the new options for golden visa which will enlarge the initial ones. For current holders of Golden Visa Residence Permits please note that nothing have changed in regards to your class of investment and you are able to continue your program without any change.

i. Capital transfer with a value equal to or above 1 million Euros; (keeps unchanged)
ii. The creation of, at least, 10 permanent job positions; (now is already working with 10 job positions instead of 30 )
iii. The purchase of real estate property with a value equal to or above 500 thousand Euros;  (keeps unchanged)
iv. The purchase of real estate property, with construction dating back more than 30 years or located in urban regeneration areas, for refurbishing, for a total value equal to or above 350 thousand Euros; (new)
v. Capital donation with a value equal to or above 350 thousand Euros for investing  in research activities conducted by public or private scientific research institutions involved in the national scientific or technologic system; (new)
vi. Capital donation with a value equal to or above 250 thousand Euros for investing  in artistic output or supporting the arts, for reconstruction or refurbishment of the national heritage, through the local and central authorities, public institutions, public corporate sector, public foundations, private foundations of public interest,  networked local authorities, local corporate sector organizations, local associations and public cultural associations, pursuing activities of artistic output, and reconstruction or maintenance of the national heritage; (new)
vii. Capital transfer with a value equal to or above 500 thousand Euros, for purchasing shares in investment funds or in venture capital geared to capitalize small and medium companies that, in turn, must present a feasible capitalization plan. (new)

Please note that for areas with less than 100 citizens per Km2 you are now able to perform the investment option iii) with 400.000 Euro or above and option iv) with 280.000 Euro or above.

Our range or options is now enlarged and you can perform your real estate investment from a minimum of 280.000 Euro up to a minimum of 500.000 Euro depending on what type of investment you prefer.

New Regulation in practice also allows you to make any of this investment under a copy name which you can be sole owner or co-ownership as long as your share capital is equivalent to the minimum invested.

For more information or any clarifications do not hesitate to contact us.

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa, Investment

UPDATE: Now Accepted – OLD Alert: Open Investors process without documents is no longer accepted at Immigration Department

Update: We are now able to submit your biometric data at your first trip without any documentation ready. Please disregard the communication bellow.

We have been receiving investors in Portugal within the past 2 years that are coming without the full set of documents to present to Immigration Department. Due to the changes on internal procedures inside Immigration Department for the following period of time all Investors which decide to travel to Portugal to submit their finger prints and their biometric data need to have their documentation required.

Due to this changes, we are now requesting all Investors to collect their Police Clearance Report duly stamped by Portugal Embassy of their document issuing country before traveling to Portugal. In case you are bringing your family please also collect their Police Clearance Report, Marriage Certificate or Birth Certificate in order to be able to start the process (all documents need to be duly stamped at Portugal Embassy).

Since the demand of the program is increasing quickly it is now requested that Investors advise their travel intentions 4 weeks before their traveling date in order to assure a visit to Immigration Department. In case you are planing to fly in a much shorter period than the one announced here, please contact us in order to identify the risks and possible solutions.

For those who intent to travel without the documents, please be aware that after your investment is completed and your process is been approved you will need to travel to Portugal to submit your biometric data in order to be able to receive your residence permit card.

The Golden Visa Immigration procedures are being revised, for the time being those are the current rules, once the system has been updated we will inform you.

Police Clearance Golden Visa - Investors Visa Portugal

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa, Investment, Real Estate - Portugal

Golden Visa Numbers 2014 – Stats for Investor Visa

Investor Visa 2014 in Review

Its easy to make a simple and easy short evaluation of what was the Investor Visa Program during 2014. At this moment all institutions are very happy with the course of this program and Investors are welcome to continue to boost Portuguese economy to leverage the capacity of the Government to revitalize our beautiful country.

The Published Numbers are:

2014 – 1526 Investors Approved

2013 – 424 Investors Approved

2012 – 2 Investors Approved

Number of Family Members Approved

2014 – 2395 Family Members

2013 – 494 Family Members

The Total Investment Generated by this Program:

By Acquiring Real Estate:

1.110.702.081,12 Euro (1.110 million euro)

By Capital Transfer:

117.271.745,77 Euro (117 million euro)

The Total Number of Investors per Type of Investment:

1916 Investors choose Real Estate Option  – 95%

103 Investors choose Capital Option – 5%

3 Investors choose to create over 10 Jobs – 0%

Main Nationalities

China: 81%

Brazil: 3%

Russia: 3%

South Africa: 2%

Lebanon: 2%

After seeing the results it is easy to understand that 95% of the Investors choose to purchase Real Estate and elected this option as their preferred, in average they added 1,18 persons to their program which is less than 2 persons per investor and in 1 years the demand for this Golden Visa Program has increased over 350% compared to previous year. The expectation that is 2015 will beat the record of applicants and will reach at least 2000 application successfully approved within one year. The origin of the Investors is clearly dominated by China.

Numbers Overview 2014 Golden Visa Investors Program Portugal

 

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa, Investment

UK Travels Alert

As we known, all citizens with valid residence permit in European Union have freedom of traveling around European Union Countries. In this sense, all citizens from non-EU countries with a valid residence permit should be able to freely travel within European Union Space (Schengen and Non Schengen Countries).

As recently British Prime Minister David Cameron is restricting the access to foreign citizens to UK, they have been rejecting access of Non-European Citizens with valid residence permits in European Countries.

As principle, this violates the main European Union statements and recently a Colombian Citizen with valid residence permit in Spain have appealed in UK Courts based on the fact that was rejected to enter UK  with Valid European Union Residence Permit and won the case with European Union Court counseling.

For all Investors which hold residence permit cards from Portugal please note that by law and principle you should be granted access into UK for traveling purposes not for residence or work purposes however due to the latest behavior  of UK Immigration Border Offices it becomes unstable to take it as a guaranteed entry. It is very important that in case you decide to try entering UK (at your own risk) with Portugal Residence Permit Card that you state that you are living in Portugal, otherwise your entry will be refused.

Attached please find a newspaper article with a court case with this matters.

UK Travel Court Case with Valid Residence Permit from European Union

 

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa, Investment

Capital Investment Over 1.000.000 Euro – Rules Changed

For all investors considering to apply for 1.000.000 euro capital investment option, please note that Immigration Department is now restricting the assets in which you can apply the capital. You are able to buy Portuguese companies stocks or leave the money in a time deposit at the bank. All investments to be done in foreign assets will not be accepted. This also involves all investment funds which are located outside of Portugal and investing in Portuguese stocks or Portuguese Investment Funds which are exclusively investing outside of Portugal.

Due to the fact that several Investors when applying for their Investors Visa have choosen to buy sovereign bonds from other countries or by investing in their own investment funds, government is not restricting the options on which you can choose for investment to make sure the spirit of the law is respected.

For those investors which have already performed their investments, Government clarified that will be checking randomly the types of investments they have been doing and in case they do not respect the law spirit will be notified to reconvert their assets. By the time of renewals any investor which holds a capital investment in the bank by using foreign titles, it will be required to reconvert their assets in acceptable investment options in order to have their applications successfully processed.

investmentcapital

 

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa, Real Estate - Portugal

Changes on Visa Fees Prices – Government Update

We would like to take this opportunity to update all Golden Visa / Investors Visa interested candidates that Government have raised the Visa fees prices within the last weeks.

The raise on prices is just an update according to price index calculations and does not modify anything of what have been doing within the past year. For your information the new price list is the following:

Process Analysis Fee: 514,80  (before used to be 513,75€

Investors Fee to Issue Residence Permit Cards: 5.147,80 € ( before used to be  5.137,50€

Process Analysis Fee for each dependent added into Investors Application: 80.20  ( before used to be 80,04 Euro)

Renewals fee for each card: 2.573,90€ ( before used to be  2.568,75€)

In the meanwhile government announced that  we have received already 2 thousand million euro foreign investment in Real Estate and  since the beginning of the program over 578 million euro have been from Investors Program. Over 130.000 Properties have been sold to Foreign Investors and 2014 has been seen as a recovery year.  Out of the 962 residence permit already conceded, 788 visas were given to chinese nationals.

In regards to Real Estate the biggest foreign investors are still the British accounting over 800 properties purchased in 2014, Chinese with 550 properties followed by French with 547 properties.

It is expected that price will rise in the next month since some prime areas in Lisbon and Algarve are already out of New Developments.

contemporary-villas-for-sale-in-portugal-minimalist-algarve-villas

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Citizenship - Portugal

Portugal is known to be a Safe country but the Good News are it is becoming Safer

 

Safety in Portugal

In general terms Portugal is very well known to be a safe country, where you are able to walk out on the street without having fears that something might happen to you. The good news is that Violent Criminality reduced by 9.5% since last year.

According to the Annual Internal Security Report (RASI) presented yesterday in Lisbon, there is a record of less 2143 cases from violent criminality in 2013 compared to 2012. The general criminality reduced by 6.9%  with less 27.375 cases registered in Police Stations.

For Golden Visa Investors which are considering Portugal as a possibility to obtain residence permit and citizenship by investment, it is clear that Portugal has a main focus as one of the safest countries in Europe and where situation is nice, you can easily walk on the street any time of the day and situation is only getting better.

You are welcome to visit Portugal and enjoy the best of our safety environment. Most of all construction developments are all without security guards or private compounds. Situation is so safe and reliable that it makes no sense to be creating private areas. Living in freedom and without fear is on of the top conditions to live a happy life.

 

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa

Vice-Prime Minister confirms 772 Investors Visa granted till now and only 11 rejections

 

Investor Visa | Golden Visa | Paulo Portas Vice Prime Minister PortugalVice-Prime Minister Paulo Portas confirmed that 772 Investors Visa have been already granted and so far they have only made 11 rejections. This leaves the rejection rate at very low levels such as less than 2%.

From those 11 rejections 7 were dependents which have seen their residence permit not granted by the fact they could not meet the criteria. From the remaining 4 investors which could not see their application approved, most of the issues are related to criminal record or lack of documents to confirm that investment have been performed.

After reviewing this numbers, it is easy to conclude that this Investors Program so far is being a big success and that the quality of applicants is really high. It is clear that this program will stay for longer period since the foreign investment amount that this is bringing to Portugal is substantial.

From all the applicants Chinese are still almost 80% (612) of the applicants for this program. Vice-Prime Minister Paulo Portas is making a big effort to market this program in different countries to diversify the foreign investment for Portugal.

464 million euro have already been invested in Portugal. Most of the applicants choosing the option of Real Estate as their preferred investment option. Only 4 persons have choose the option of creating a company and less than 40 the possibility of depositing 1.000.000 Euro in a Bank account.

Due to high demand of applicants that are willing to start this program, the Immigration Office is already taking a longer time to approve the applications.

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa

Why Rich Ukranian are now moving assets to Portugal ?

Rich Ukranian are now moving to Portugal for Golden Visa

Ukrainian started immigration to Portugal in 2001 becoming the biggest immigration nationality around 2003, being one of the biggest immigrant nations in Portugal in the last decade. In 2003 more than  64.695 legal Ukrainian were working legally in Portugal with estimation of another 20.000 working illegally.  This numbers at that time represented more than 15% of total number of immigrants in Portugal.

At that time, only Ukrainian with difficult economic conditions were moving their life to Portugal, most of those immigrants they were well educated and working in different fields other than their education expertise. The links between Ukraine and Portugal have become quite close and it became usual to find Ukrainian immigrants all over Portugal in the most variety of positions.

Now the world has changed, conditions in Ukraine in the last years have improved a lot, several immigrants returned to their country (2006 only 40.000 Ukrainian legally working in Portugal) and it became less interesting to live and work in Portugal. The world changes so fast that nowadays only Rich Ukrainian are moving to Portugal, specially those who are looking for safety area to live, moving out of a possible conflict that can generate a big war and securing their assets all over the world.

Being surrounded by sun and clean blue sky is one of the biggest attractions that rich Ukrainian identify in Portugal. Those who decided to live Ukraine to obtain their Golden Visas are expected to become Portuguese within next 6 years. Now they count with a big local community of Ukrainian immigrants, specialty food stores with Ukrainian products and lots of different traditions already integrated into our society.

Portugal is fully open to all Ukrainian that want to obtain Golden Visas to run away from the recent conflicts that can last for a long period. If you wish to know details, you are welcome to get in contact with us.

For those who wish to find detailed information about Ukrainian immigration to Portugal please check this link.

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Citizenship - Portugal, Golden Visa

Citizenship by Investment Law| Golden Visa

We have been queried several times to explain where in Portuguese Law it states that Citizenship can be granted for Investors that joined the Golden Visa program. In order to provide a clear understanding of citizenship is important to realize that Golden Visa regulations and Citizenship are different and separate laws. Citizenship is a specific law that regulates all and possible cases any person can be able to request citizenship and in which terms. Golden Visa program allows investors to obtain one of the conditions to be able to apply for citizenship.

Citizenship in Portuguese Territory for Foreigners:

1- Government provides the Portuguese nationality by naturalization to foreigners that fulfill the following requests:

a) Adults and over 18 years old as per Portuguese Law

b) Have legal residence permit for at least 6 years

c) Know the basics of Portuguese Language as per article 25

d) Have not been sentenced or are planned to be sentenced by a court of a crime with a sentence of jail for a period superior to 3 years as per Portuguese Law. (other words no crime record or potential crime record)

Since all Investors that joined Golden Visa application have been already screened in regards to their criminal record, if nothing changed there is only option c) to be provided. Option c) is currently provided with a multiple choice test in Portuguese.
For those who want to have a look of Portuguese Citizenship law, we are posting the correct link to download.

Citizenship Law

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