Our letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer: Investor visas risk rolling out the red carpet to kleptocrats, criminals, and spies
Friday, 4 July 2025
Dear Chancellor,
We are writing to express our concerns about reports that the UK Government is planning a new investment visa, or ‘Golden Visa’, scheme. Past experience suggests this would be misguided, offer minimal economic benefit, and expose the UK to acute national security risks by facilitating foreign influence and the flow of illicit finance.
Recent claims placed in the media that the UK is suffering from a millionaire exodus – which appear to have prompted this renewed interest in golden visas – are unfounded and based on flawed research, as explained by the Tax Justice Network, Tax Justice UK, and Patriotic Millionaires UK. Despite the headline-grabbing claims made, Henley & Partners’ own report indicates an effective near-0% rate of millionaire migration from the UK.
Evidence suggests that the beneficiaries of any passive investment visa scheme are likely to include foreign kleptocrats, criminals and spies. In addition to carrying the cost of mitigating these serious national security risks, the people of the UK are unlikely to see any overall economic benefit at all. We detail this evidence in Annex 1 and 2 of this letter.
Further, establishing a new investor visa route would be likely to be viewed negatively by the Financial Action Task Force which will be reviewing the UK’s anti-money laundering framework in 2026.
We urge you to consider alternative methods of attracting investment to the UK that offer better economic outcomes to the people of the UK without the inherent national security risks associated with investment visas. Golden visas were rightly buried at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – we see no case for bringing them back from the dead now.
Sincerely,
UK Anti-Corruption Coalition
Spotlight on Corruption
Transparency International UK
Tax Justice UK
Patriotic Millionaires UK
Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland and Butler to the World
Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI
Annex 1 - Lack of economic benefit
A report by the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in 2014 found that while benefits to visa applicants were significant, it was less clear whether “UK residents benefit from the existence of the route, and even if they benefit at all”. Academic research has drawn similar conclusions.
A Home Office review of the Tier 1 (investor) visa regime found that “there are inherent difficulties in an investment-based immigration route based on passive wealth, both in terms of security and economic value.” The previous government position was that “any future visa route to facilitate investment-based migration must not offer entry solely on the basis of the applicant’s personal wealth.”
When he was Minister for Immigration, Robert Jenrick MP told Parliament “there is little evidence that this type of passive investment programme offers an effective model for delivering material value to the UK economy.”
The UK’s investor visa was also susceptible to abuse that diverted or minimised investments in the UK:
In one case, a circular investment scheme run by Russian nationals saw the collective £112 million investments of over 100 mostly Chinese investor migrants going almost exclusively to Russian companies, meaning the scheme gave away the benefit of UK visas without the UK itself benefitting at all.
In another case, a financial services firm arranged for its clients (who mostly hailed from China) to obtain Tier 1 investor visas at a cost of £400,000 without having to invest the full £2 million as stipulated in the Immigration Rules.
The indirect expenditure of wealthy individuals who move to the UK through any new investor visa is likely to be highly uneven and will not serve the interests of working people as promised in the Labour Party’s 2024 Manifesto. For instance, the 2014 MAC report found that the purchase of residential property by Tier 1 investors did “not provide a benefit to the UK” because if these investors were not purchasing property and paying stamp duty land tax, other individuals would instead. The MAC report also found that Tier 1 (investor) visas drew applicants away from other visa routes reported to have greater economic benefit.
Other jurisdictions have, like the UK did in 2022, cancelled golden visa programs for the following reasons:
Australia’s Business Innovation and Investment Program was scrapped in January 2022 after the Government there found it was "delivering poor economic outcomes". A report by an independent Australian think tank found that each permanent visa allocated via this scheme cost Australian taxpayers A$120,000 over their lifetime.
The Irish immigrant investor program meanwhile was discontinued in 2023 after an official memo noted it was “predominated by significant passive endowment in civil society from individuals with little or no links to Ireland involving no investment strategy and little job creation”. The memo also noted that the vast majority of applicants to the scheme were from China.
Spain’s golden visa program was cancelled in 2024, with the PM citing the pressures it created on the housing market which had contributed to “disaster and to lacerating inequality”.
Annex 2 - National security risks
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has noted that “abuses are widely documented, including enabling corruption, money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes”.
The Financial Action Task Force, which will soon be reviewing the UK’s adherence to global anti money laundering standards, has found numerous issues with residence by investment programmes, noting that they are “desirable for illicit actors seeking to place themselves, family members and illicitly acquired assets into the issuing jurisdictions”.
The EU identified in 2019 that investor residence and citizenships schemes may “create a range of risks for Member States and for the Union as a whole: in particular, risks to security, including the possibility of infiltration of non-EU organised crime groups, as well as risks of money laundering, corruption and tax evasion.”
Investment visa regimes including the one formerly active in the UK have long been criticised for their weak due diligence checks on the source of applicants’ wealth. Under the Tier 1 (investor) visa scheme, there was excessive reliance by the Home Office on wealth managers, who benefited financially from investments made, to perform these checks. For example, the same firm that circumvented the rules by allowing investments of just £400,000 was also found to have serviced a wealthy client subject to a UK Unexplained Wealth Order.
Numerous individuals who have since been sanctioned by the UK Government – or where there is reasonable suspicion of them being involved in serious organised crime and/or corruption – received Tier 1 (investor) visas before the route was scrapped in 2022. For example, at least 10 individuals placed under Russia sanctions used the tier 1 investor route, and a significant portion of the £15.38 million that the National Crime Agency sought to confiscate as part of its investigation into the Azerbaijan laundromat was used to fund Tier 1 investor visas.
It is notable that a large number of applicants to both the former Tier 1 (investor) visa regime, as well as equivalent schemes in Australia and Ireland, were from China. With the recent National Security Strategy highlighting the finding from the China Audit that the country’s “espionage, interference in UK democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years”, a new investor visa regime would risk undermining efforts to strengthen the UK’s defences against foreign interference.