Over the last decade, many rich foreigners have bought citizenship or residency rights from the European Union (EU) countries they have no real connection to. And because countries have accepted the money with little checks on who or where it came from, the EU’s so-called golden visa and golden passport schemes have been sorely vulnerable to corruption and money laundering. What’s worse, investigations have shown that government officials and private sector intermediaries often knew they were helping suspicious individuals. Transparency International campaigns to get the European Commission to curb the corrupt abuse of golden visa and golden passport schemes.
