ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Government of the Commonwealth of Dominica decided to suspend the processing of all the applications from Russian and Belarusian nationals to the Citizenship by Investment Program, a decision that has remained in place ever since it was made at the beginning of March.
Speaking with Rudaw's Roj Eli Zalla earlier this month, the managing director at Advance Global Partners in Dominica, which is a processing agency for the program of Citizenship by Investment attributed the reason to inaccessibility by British and American agencies to look into applications made by citizens from the two neighboring countries.
"If we start with Russia and Belarus, the reason is quite simple, because of the access issues to Russia and because the agencies that do the due diligence are western-based," Kenneth Green said. "Their ability to go into Russia right now to investigate files of Russian citizens is null," he added.
Green explained that "interestingly" this decision does not include Ukraine.
Anyone wishing to obtain Dominican citizenship should donate up to $100,000 to the Dominican government or invest at least $200,000 in real estate in the little British Commonwealth Caribbean state.
A Dominica passport allows visa-free travel to over 153 countries worldwide, making it desirable for those countries that often face significant barriers in obtaining foreign visas.
Dominican officials say they receive applications from the CBI program across the world including the USA.
"Through Covid, I think a lot of Americans decided that they did not like, for example, certain things that they were going through in [the] United States," he explained.
The majority of applications for Dominican citizenship are submitted from the Middle East including Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
The program, however, has currently been halted for the people of the Kurdistan Region until further notice as they review an unspecified number of forged documents submitted from the region.
“The pause is on new applicants,” Emmanuel Nanthan, head of Dominica Citizenship by Investment Unit told Rudaw last week, adding that those who have previously obtained the citizenship are free and welcomed citizens of Dominica.
In recent years, there has been a growing demand from the people of the Kurdistan Region to obtain Dominican citizenship and passport.
