 which has already been signed by the other Citizenship offering nations){kind=link}
Saint Lucia: The government of Saint Lucia has signed the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) which has already been signed by the other Citizenship offering nations in the Caribbean. The fact that Saint Lucia has followed the leads of their fellow nations is being considered as a historic move.
The leadership of the country has agreed to follow a common standard, as established in the MoA in terms of Pricing, Information Sharing and Transparency Standards, Regulations and more. The other CBI nations had signed the Memorandum of Agreement in March.
Under the agreement, Saint Lucia has  also agreed to match the fellow nations in terms of security screening and framework, marketing, regulation of agents promotion of programmes, and capacity building, dispute resolution, joint training, amendment and termination.
The standards will help in improving the trustworthiness of the programme and refine it for the benefit of the nation as well as its investors. The agreement directed all the OECS nations who are offering Citizenship to increase their minimum investment threshold to US $200,000.
The nations have to make this specific change in their Citizenship by Investment Programme by June 30, 2024. The government of Saint Lucia highlighted that they held extensive deliberations and discussions with stakeholders and OECS heads of states that offer Citizenship by Investment.
It was after thorough discussions with the relevant authorities that the leadership reached this decision. Furthermore, Saint Lucia also offered some other suggestions to strengthen the country’s Citizenship by Investment Programme.
The Saint Lucian leadership suggested that there should be an annual quota on the Citizenship by Investment. The leaders also suggested that they should look into the Net worth of any prospective investors.
Further, they suggested that escrow accounts which should be held in Saint Lucia or in the individual islands. They also demanded that only the licensed promoters should be allowed to submit applications to local authorized agents.
Further, these promoters will also have to submit a due diligence report on each applicant that comes to the nation through them. The nation has also already implemented some of the requirements laid out and agreed upon with the US.
On February 15, the nation implemented a ban on the applicants from Russians and Belarusians. In September 2023, the Citizenship by Investment Unit also implemented Mandatory Interviews for all applicants.
On the same day, the CIP also announced that they would conduct the vetting process for the applicants through the local Financial Intelligence Authority. The CIP has started sharing the denials of the applications with the Joint Regional Communication Centre (JRCC) in January 2020.
The nation highlighted that they will conduct the operational review of the programme by an international consultancy firm. The review will start and notably, Saint Lucia CIP will take help from the international organizations for the recovery of revoked passports.