After months of uncertainty and a full-scale investigation into corruption which still sees key players in varying forms of custody, the Portuguese government has revamped the entire Golden Visa programme.
Presenting new rules and radical reforms this week, the country’s self-styled Golden Visa ambassador Paulo Portas stressed that corruption will be an evil of the past.
Guaranteeing the way ahead involves “checking, checking and more checking”, his words have been warmly welcomed from all working directly with the programme – not least the country’s association of real estate brokers who found themselves under an uncomfortable spotlight when the scandal first broke.
“This news sends a very good message to the market,” Luís Lima, president of APEMIP told national radio Antena 1.
Indeed, for the first time in a very long time there were no dissenting voices over a government announcement.
As Portas explained, “the aim is to improve this programme. There are 13 other EU countries with similar investor programmes, and it doesn’t seem wise to me to give ours up to the benefit of others.”
The only (small) cloud on the horizon came from border control agency SEF – which said it hopes the changes will see access to more manpower.
Checks require human resources, SEF’s union spokesman Acácio Pereira told journalists, and these are currently far too thin on the ground.
As the Resident revealed last week, dozens of applications for Golden Visas (otherwise known as fast-tracked residency visas for non-European citizens) are reported to be in limbo as SEF inspectors have been on a go-slow since Operation Labyrinth got underway in November.
The delays hinged on the introduction of changes which inspectors knew were in the melting pot. Monday at last saw them rolled out with the characteristic silver-(if not gold-)tongued delivery that has been the cornerstone of Paulo Portas’ political survival.
How Golden Visas have been extended
The programme has been cleverly extended to embrace the sectors of science, culture and urban rehabilitation, while at the same time favouring the country’s increasingly abandoned interior.
The original programme saw the fast-tracking of residency visas for investors who:
▪ started a business which employed at least 10 people;
▪ bought a property valued at €500,000 or over;
▪ transferred €1 million in cash to Portugal (to remain on deposit for a period of five years).
Now the same visas will also be available to people who:
▪ invest at least €350,000 in a scientific project in Portugal;
▪ invest or support an artistic project – again for not less than €350,000;
▪ rehabilitate and maintain a heritage site or building – again for not less than €350,000;
▪ purchase a property “to realise works of urban rehabilitation” (€500,000)
▪ and, finally, what Observador website calls “perhaps the greatest news of all”, the regime will be open to investors at 20% less in terms of expenses if they are prepared to develop projects in Portugal’s ‘deserted interior’ – areas of extremely low population density (less than 100 people/km).
As Portas explained when he presented the new regime – flanked by secretary of state for internal administration João Pinho and minister for the presidency Luís Marques Guedes – the plan here is to see Golden Visas benefiting “not just the large towns and cities” and thus truly being able to “dynamise the Portuguese economy”.
It is a heroic effort to recover the dignity of a programme that has already seen Portugal welcome over €1.27 billion worth of business, netting over €100 million in taxation revenue alone.
Tighter controls
“Checks, checks and more checks. These are the words that will lead all the processes that attribute Golden Visas in Portugal,” writes Observador.
While SEF’s former boss Manuel Palos sits unpaid at home sporting an electronic bracelet, the bottom line is that no one official can ever again be left in charge of this programme.
The checking will start with regional directors and involve periodic audits by IGAI (the internal administration inspectorate) “always in full articulation with the Assembly of the Republic”.
Whether or not the new system will delay the processing of visas does not seem to be an issue. Everyone is agreed. The stigma left by the scandal of Operation Labyrinth – even though none of the defendants have yet come to court – has been damaging in the extreme.
“The case is a deep embarrassment for Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, whose government had trumpeted the golden visas as a resounding success,” wrote the Economist’s Charlemagne Blog in November, stressing “the scheme has now cost him a key minister less than a year before a general election”. Hence the importance of Monday’s announcement. It was a chance for the government to recover lost Brownie points as it opened the country up to further potential for foreign investment.
In the sabre-rattling terminology of Paulo Portas, if any people are now found to have perverted the scheme “may the full force of the law and justice fall on top of them”.
“A rotten apple should not affect the rest of the fruit,” said the politician whose experience of rotten apples many would say has been remarkable.
A political Houdini, Portas’ first reaction to news of the visa scandal was that “one must never confuse the tree for the forest”.
All one can hope now is that SEF will be able to see the forest for the trees and unblock the scores of visa applications now said to be languishing in limbo.
Meantime, former SEF boss Manuel Palos, former secretary-general of the Justice Ministry Maria Antónia Anes, former notary boss António Figueiredo, Chinese businessman Zhu Xiaodong and Portuguese entrepreneur Jaime Couto – previously in business with former interior minister Miguel Macedo – remain in either preventive or domiciliary custody as part of the ongoing investigations led by officers conducting Operation Labyrinth – no doubt expecting the full force of the law and justice to fall on top of them.
By NATASHA DONN natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
Photo: Deputy Prime Minister Paulo Portas (centre) presenting the recent alterations to Portugal’s Golden Visa scheme in Lisbon on February 23. Pictured with the Minister of the Presidency and Parliamentary Affairs, Luís Marques Guedes (left), and the Secretary of State for Internal Administration, João Pinho de Almeida
Photo by: MIGUEL A. LOPES/LUSA
