The Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov has called for the introduction of further regulations for persons granted Bulgarian citizenship by investment.
This comes at a time when Bulgaria stripped citizenship of 10 investors, who acquired Bulgarian passports for various reasons including not maintaining the investment. In 2018, Bulgaria granted fast track citizenship to 29 investors against investors who made EUR 1m investment in Bulgaria. According to public information from the Presidency of Bulgaria, 12 applications were successful for investors’ citizenship under the fast-track scheme in 2017.
In an interview to Radio Bulgaria, Sotir Tsatsarov stated that the investigations conducted by the State Agency for National Security and the Prosecutor’s Office established multiple violations and the absence of any control mechanism which allows schemes for selling Bulgarian citizenship.
He stated the problem can be solved, if citizenship is granted only for a genuine investment which is sustained and developed.
“The other option is not to grant citizenship by investment at all”, he said
Art. 22. (1) Naturalization on the basis of which Bulgarian was acquired citizenship may be revoked if the person, did not maintain the investments that occurred grounds for acquiring Bulgarian citizenship for at least two years, from the date of naturalization, according to Presidential decree which grants citizenships. Other reasons for cancellations the naturalization include, document fraud and concealment of information.
Not maintaining the investment is the no.1 reason for investors being deprived of Bulgarian citizenship. Many investors go through financing or loans to meet the 1 million requirement, but fail to main the investment for a total of 3 years (1 years for before citizenship and two years after citizenship).
Under the CBI scheme, foreign investors after making the investment must have residence permits for atleast one year (15-20 months), before can apply for passports. This makes Bulgaria one of the slowest citizenship by investment (CBI) scheme in Europe.
Bulgaria is the only CBI country that has revoked more citizenships, compared to Malta and Cyprus. No other EU country has revoked citizenship of investors than Bulgaria, who invested under the CBI scheme. As of today, Malta has revoked one citizenship of an investor, while Cyprus has zero cases.
Tsatsarov also called for stricter requirements regarding the documents proving Bulgarian origin for the granting of Bulgarian citizenship to persons from the Bulgarian minorities in neighbouring countries or countries nearby.
The Ministry of Justice introduced more tighter checks for acquiring citizenship, last year includes interviews and proposed to call off the scheme, as the scheme brought no economic benefits to Bulgaria. However this scheme is active and still running as of 2019.
The European Commission in its report on investor citizenship schemes estimated, Bulgaria received only EUR 162 million through Citizenship by investment and Golden visa scheme. This figure is negligible compared to 8bn euros received by Cyprus and excess of 1m euros raised by Malta.
Bulgaria remains the least popular citizenship by investment program in Europe. Despite this, bulgaria also has a powerful EU passport with CBI scheme, which attracts fewer than anticipated investors.
