Citizenship by investment (aka golden visas) invite corruption. The European Union has been trying to eliminate these sorts of visas for obvious reasons.
If you want to see a dedicated scam artist who will scam you out of 6 figures to “help” you get a citizenship by investment, check out Nomad Capitalist YouTube channel.
You are being downvoted because you did not provide any proof he is a scammer, nor a definition of what you mean by this strong claim. Citizen by investment costs from 150k (montenegro?) to 250k-350k (st kitts, turkey, etc) to 600k-2.5 million USD (USA?), and typically costs 30% less if you're willing to simply pay the money and be done with it, or the undiscounted price if you'd like to genuinely invest (normally in assets that are government-approved and looks scammy/risky to me).
My point with the above, is that it's a high ticket item, and can be massively impactful for the buyer. It's normal when people spend a few hundred grand for those involved in the process to take a high commission. Even a 5% commission could be 15k. Is he scamming people for more? This would be kinda strange because the costs of these programs are very much public. Is he pretending he can get you a citizenship for cheaper and then pocketing your money, knowing you won't go to law enforcement because you intended your money to go towards corruption of a government official?
Please provide evidence.
As an aside, has anyone here purchased a citizenship through investment and not lost money? I'm very curious.
Here is a review site for Nomad Capitalist detailing his scam methods (which has "positive" counterreviews--especially towards the top): https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/nomadcapitalist.com (Control/Command + F = "Just don't do it" to find the gist of his scheme)
People on these pages have advised instead to get both accountants and lawyers on both sides (USA and country abroad) and looking into stuff yourself, instead of relying on businesses such as Nomad Capitalist and others. For the lawyer side, especially abroad, you will want both a business and immigration lawyer helping you out. The place to go for that is the US/Canada/Australia/UK/Ireland/etc. embassy to your target country's website, and get those lawyer lists. Obviously the list is not an endorsement of the lawyers, and lawyers can be sketchy. It is important to look for red flags such as painting an overly perfect picture of themselves, or positive counter-reviews (to negative reviews). My lawyer (for Croatian citizenship) was also head of an international commerce association, and therefore it meant that he probably had to deal with complicated laws, had to get along with people, and had to get things done.
None of these links have actual evidence that NC is a scam. They are all pretty much “he charges a lot of money for consulting fees and I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”
How does it invite corruption if it's a legitimate government sponsored pathway? I'm sure NZers are happy to get a piece of rich migrants wealth vs. their money staying in offshore havens
Citizenship by investment (CBI) and residency by investment (RBI) schemes in the EU
This study analyses the state of play and issues surrounding citizenship and residency by investment schemes (so-called ‘golden passports’ and ‘golden visas’) in the EU. It looks at the economic social and political impacts of such schemes and examines the risks they carry in respect of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.
There is a perception here that housing prices are constantly propped up and inflated because of rich migrants. Or simply because rich people are parking money in Vancouver real estate.
This has been going on since the 1990s.
In the short term people who own property and can benefit from the influx of money are happy. Over time it creates huge resentment from those who don’t see an opportunity to be able to afford owning. This resentment is even found among those earlier rich migrants who are now being priced out by migrants with more money.
I’m sure there is similar sentiment in San Francisco and other places where tech workers have caused prices to increase.
If this is limited in some way, then maybe the locals will be happy to see some additional wealth coming in.
SF has been unaffordable long before the last two or three tech booms, and it's because of limited supply. People just don't go back to read the headlines from the 70s about how expensive it was.
A quick search reveals an article [1] documenting some of the zoning issues that seem to have started in the 1870s.
It mentions many different discriminatory zoning practices throughout the history of the city, and it does show an article from 1978 where people started to voice concerns over pricing.
Thanks for pointing out the longer timeline on affordability!
[1] https://www.newzealand-migration.co.nz/dual-citizenship-serv...