Germany Arrests 10 for Illicitly Providing Residence Permits to Wealthy Foreigners
www.occrp.org
German authorities conducted searches on Thursday as part of an ongoing operation against a group led by two lawyers who helped wealthy foreigners obtain immigration papers illicitly in exchange for thousands of euros.

Authorities detained 10 suspects, including two lawyers and one government employee.

The group is suspected of exploiting special provisions for foreign skilled workers to issue residence permits to hundreds of wealthy foreigners, primarily Chinese nationals but also individuals from the Arab region.

Clients paid between 30,000 and 350,000 euros to the lawyers, who then created fictitious companies to employ the clients and issued them salaries on paper. This facilitated their acquisition of residence permits in Germany.

  • VodkaSolution @feddit.itEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    There usually is a big amount of money that if invested in country’s long term stock, grant you citizenship. I think for Italy is 500k euros, don’t know about Germany

    • Manucode@feddit.deEnglish
      7·
      7 months ago

      No, this was actually an illegal scheme rather than an official one by the government like the one in Italy. Here, government officials took bribes to grant these rich foreigners fraudulent residency permits.

      • hushable@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        New Zealand has an investor visa which grants permanent residence but not citizenship. Wouldn’t be surprised if any other countries do that too.