Business Wire

IMC

24.10.2018 12:20:09 CEST | Business Wire | Press release

Share
Investment Migration Council Responds to the OECD’s Concerns over Residence-/Citizenship-by-Investment Programs

The Investment Migration Council (IMC) understands the motivation behind the OECD’s recent analysis and guidance regarding the purported circumvention of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) in both residence-by-investment (RBI) and citizenship-by-investment (CBI) programs.

We entirely agree that individuals should be stopped from using such programs to avoid accurate CRS reporting or, even worse, to engage in financial crimes, including money laundering and terrorist financing.

However, it is important to be clear about four important facts:

  • Only a very small percentage of residence or citizenship statuses legitimately obtained through RBI or CBI programs are at issue. For the vast majority of applicants, tax is a non-issue, since they either move completely to their new place of residence and become tax residents there or do not change their tax residence at all.
  • Within the EU, the European Economic Area and Switzerland, the freedom of establishment means that any citizen of these countries can freely move to any other one of these countries and does not have to use an RBI or CBI program to establish their tax residence there.
  • RBI/CBI programs are only a fraction of the immigration options available to individuals. Most residence permits and citizenships are in fact obtained under other options, which can be equally used or abused for circumventing CRS, while citizenships obtained through EU CBI programs account for less than 0.1% of all the citizenships granted in the EU.
  • Of those nearly one million citizenships granted by the EU each year that are not related to CBI programs, there are many high-risk nationalities, including Pakistan, Ukraine, Algeria, Russia, Nigeria, and Somalia, that pose a much more real danger to the international community in terms of criminal activity in the financial system.

Bruno L’ecuyer, Chief Executive of the IMC, says, “The abuse of CRS is contrary to the strategic rationale for and specific design of investment migration programs, which is to facilitate – following a detailed and intensive due diligence process – the legitimate movement of capital and people, which is essential to the contemporary global economic model. The IMC urges the OECD to review and strengthen the CRS due diligence requirements, but not with a sole focus on RBI/CBI programs.”

Read our full response and key recommendations to the OECD here .

Contact:

Bruno L’ecuyer Chief Executive of the IMC media@investmentmigration.org +41 22 533 1333

Link:

ClickThru

About Business Wire

Business Wire
Business Wire
101 California Street, 20th Floor
CA 94111 San Francisco

http://businesswire.com

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

AMINA Becomes First Bank to Support Canton Coin Trading and Custody6.5.2026 08:30:00 CEST | Press release

Swiss-regulated AMINA provides clients with regulated access to the network that DTCC, Visa, BitGo, and others are building on AMINA Bank AG ("AMINA"), a Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA)-regulated crypto bank with global reach, today becomes the first bank to support Canton Coin (CC), the native token of Canton Network, offering custody and trading services to its clients. Canton Network is a public, privacy-preserving blockchain built for capital markets. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260505860056/en/ AMINA Becomes First Bank to Support Canton Coin Trading and Custody Canton has gained significant institutional momentum in recent months, attracting TradFi and DeFi organizations, including the DTCC, Visa, and BitGo, that are building next-generation settlement, tokenisation, custody, and collateral workflows on the network. Canton is also developing an on-chain capital markets ecosystem t

Novatus Global Receives a King’s Award for Enterprise6.5.2026 08:00:00 CEST | Press release

Novatus Global Limited (“Novatus” “Novatus Global” or “the Company”), an award-winning provider of regulatory technology solutions and consulting services to global financial institutions, has been honoured with a King’s Award for Enterprise. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260505378016/en/ Novatus is one of only 185 organisations nationally to be recognised with a prestigious King’s Award for Enterprise in 2026. Announced today (Wednesday 6 May), the Award acknowledges the company’s outstanding achievement in Innovation. Novatus Global, founded in 2019, employs over 100 people across London, the U.S., Australia, and India and has rapidly established itself as a trusted partner to many of the world’s leading banks, asset managers, and financial institutions. Its flagship product, Novatus En:ACT, is a market-leading SaaS platform delivering complete, real-time assurance across global transaction reporting regim

Hisense Delivers 38% Sales Uplift in Western Europe Markets With NIQ’s AI-Powered Market Intelligence6.5.2026 05:00:00 CEST | Press release

NIQ insights drive international expansion and measurable growth for Hisense across key global markets NIQ (NYSE: NIQ), a global leader in consumer intelligence, today shared new learnings from its long-standing collaboration with Hisense, a leading global brand in home appliances and smart technologies. Using NIQ’s AI‑powered market intelligence, Hisense has accelerated international expansion, improved local market decision-making, and delivered measurable growth across more than 20 key markets and 12+ categories. The case study demonstrates how AI‑driven insights help global brands move faster, localize better, and compete more effectively in complex markets. The Challenge As Hisense expanded internationally, it faced rising complexity across global markets. Consumer preferences differed sharply across regions such as Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, making a one‑size‑fits‑all approach ineffective. NIQ’s AI‑powered intelligence delivered the local market depth need

Megaport Launches Built-In DDoS Protection Enabling On-Demand Network Resilience6.5.2026 00:00:00 CEST | Press release

Megaport DDoS Protection removes the trade-off between security, performance, and cost, offering rapid enterprise-grade mitigation. Megaport Limited (ASX: MP1) (“Megaport”), a leading global automated infrastructure platform, today announced the launch of Megaport DDoS Protection. This new, built-in security capability for Megaport Internet allows customers to filter malicious traffic directly within the Megaport network rather than routing it through a separate or external service, for mission-critical uptime without introducing additional latency or routing complexity. As enterprises increasingly migrate to distributed cloud environments, traditional DDoS mitigation has struggled to keep pace with cloud and distributed infrastructure adoption. Standard ISP solutions often resort to dropping all traffic and taking the service offline to protect the network, while external third-party providers force a "security detour" that reroutes traffic through public infrastructure, introducing s

IFF Reports First Quarter 2026 Results5.5.2026 22:23:00 CEST | Press release

Delivered solid top and bottom line Q1 resultsProgressing disciplined sale process for Food Ingredients businessReaffirms Full Year 2026 Financial Guidance IFF (NYSE: IFF) reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2026. First Quarter 2026 Consolidated Summary: Management Commentary “IFF is off to a solid start in 2026, with first quarter results that reflect the customer focus and operational execution we’ve been building across the company,” said Erik Fyrwald, CEO of IFF. “We delivered volume growth in all four segments, improved profitability, and generated strong cash flow in the first quarter. As we look ahead, we are maintaining a disciplined approach to how we are planning the balance of the year as the current operating environment remains unsettled. We remained focused on advancing our commercial and innovation pipelines, driving productivity, and working with customers to offset inflation. This – when combined with our solid start to the year – derisks t

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye