How To Get A 2nd Citizenship By Investment with Nuri Katz

Welcome back to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad, and today I've got a really cool, exciting episode for you. Or here on Bacon Wrapped Business. We don't call them episodes, we call them epic sizzles. I know that's cheesy, but we're going to dive into a topic that I've had I brought up in the past with Andrew Henderson, who is the founder of Nomad Capitalist. And this is this concept of SEC second citizenship and being a nomad and moving across the seas, potentially being an expat, whether that means getting a second citizenship as a plan B or getting one so that you can relinquish your current citizenship. But there's a lot of people in my circle that I talk to about this. It is something that I've been looking at doing, which is moving overseas and exploring the world a little bit more, as well as getting a second citizenship. However, if you one thing to think about, you know, why, why would I want to do this? Whether it's having a backup plan or as they call them, plan B. But there is another, a whole other thing when it comes to how do you actually do this? Because as you can imagine moving overseas, whether it's just temporarily or especially if you're establishing residency or getting citizenship somewhere else, it can be fraught with confusion and probably a lot of bureaucracy and red tape, et cetera. This is an avenue I wanted to explore a little bit more. So I found the founder of Apex Capital Partners, Nuri Katz, and I invited him to the show. So Apex Capital Partners, they're a boutique financial advisory firm that specializes in advising international individuals on second citizenship. So I couldn't think of anybody better to come on and explain really the nuances and what's happening out there. And because I have authentic curiosity on this, you're going to hear me ask a lot of questions that may have, you know, to do with something that I want to do. But if there is any, any interest on your part, I encourage you to take notes, subscribe to the show if you haven't, and then reach out to Nuri when the show is done and see if there's something that maybe you can do with him. Without any further ado, Nuri, welcome to the, to the, to the podcast.

Thank you so much, Brad, for having me. I look forward to talking to you. Absolutely.

So let's little bit of background, Apex Capital Partners, your history, before we started recording, you told me that you've been doing this for decades. Is that correct?

Yeah, I'm an old man. It's so sad.

Give me a little bit of the backstory there before we kind of dive into the real.

I'm. I get. I don't like the word nomad capitalist, but I'm both a capitalist and I've lived around the world a lot. I'm One of yous. I was born in the States, but I left the States when I was five years old. And for the last 49 years, I've lived in. I grew up kind of in Canada and Israel. I lived for. After college, I went to, believe it or not, the Soviet Union in the dying days of the Soviet Union. And I lived there for 25 years, really.

So you were there before it was the Russian Federation.

You were there before it was the Russian Federation. I was there when it was falling apart. I was there when there were all sorts of revolutions and I have all sorts of fun stories there. And I saw it falling apart and being built up again. Unfortunately, today is a kind of a sad day all around, as today's the day that war started between Ukraine and Russia. But, but aside from that, I lived in Russia and most of my clients are actually from Russia. We have an office, a big office in Moscow in the center of the city. And I now, as of a bunch of years ago, I live in Antigua in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is sort of the center of. Of the second citizenship, I guess, industry. There are five countries in the Caribbean that offer citizenship for investment. Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis, the Commonwealth of Dominica, which is not the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia and Grenada. And we have offices in all those countries other than Grenada, but we are licensed in, in all those countries, which is sort of like being a member of a bar in a state kind of thing. And I also practice personally immigration law in Canada. So I know a lot of the technicalities of how you get second citizenship. We also work a lot in, in Europe, specifically in the country of Montenegro, which is a. A very special country and is now the only country in Europe that offers a citizenship by investment program. I founded the company in Moscow actually in 1992, and since then we've grown to having offices around the Caribbean and Canada and Russia and Montenegro. And now we're actually considering opening up an office office in the US because the US Is now becoming a big center of interest in second citizenship as well right now.

Do you think that's because of a lot of the global and national uncertainty craziness that's going on in this world? Obviously, as well as I know that one of the big things that has happened with post pandemic is people realized they're calling it the Zoom Boom, right? Hey, if I got Zoom, I could work anywhere.

Why?

Why am I staying here?

God bless Zoom. I mean, I used to travel from before COVID from. From Antigua to Russia probably ten times a year. So I'd cross the Atlantic at least 20 times a year. Wow. And now, luckily, Zoom has appeared, and so I do it. I mean, I'm not so happy about COVID but it's been great for me. I get to spend more time with my family. I get to spend more time in the sun. Although I love Moscow, Moscow is my favorite city in the world. It's an incredibly contrary to what is shown on American tv. It's probably one of the coolest cities in the world, but. But it's nice that you can now live and work remotely in many different kinds of industries. But I think Covid taught us a lot of things about the powers that democratic governments have. We learned that a democratic government can become a dictatorship very quickly. That actually enshrined in the Constitution of the United States as well. Foremost in the United States, but in Canada and elsewhere, basically, the law allows the leader of the country to declare that you have to stay home, that you can't leave your state, or you can't leave your city, or you can't leave. You literally cannot leave your home. And you certainly can't leave the country or you can't enter a country. The restrictions that a democratic government like the American government can put on its people is incredible. I mean, the restrictions that have been going on and still are, are on in the United States are some of the worst restrictions of any of the other countries and all the other countries shouldn't have had. It's a hard balance to play between public health and human rights. But I think a lot of people in the US Looking around the world, seeing how other countries dealt with COVID felt that feel that their rights were being encroached on, and they just don't like it, and they don't know what's coming next. I mean, if you can do this, if you can lock people in their houses, what else can you do? I mean, you and I, before the program started, talked about what just happened in Canada, where a bunch of truckers demonstrated against the government, and so the government froze their bank accounts without court orders or without. Without any kind of judicial review. And that's, you know, that's in a country like Canada, which is sort of, you know, the most. I don't Know, it's the right term, but the most, like, lily white country in the world where nothing bad really happens. But the prime minister of Canada was able and just by signing a little piece of paper to basically declare martial law. And he's arrested a whole bunch of people, bunch of truckers who are honking their horn too loud for mischief and putting them in jail. I mean, it's all. And freezing accounts, freezing bank accounts. And it's a scary thing. But the U.S. i mean, people in the U.S. were frozen out of international travel for a year and a half. And international travel isn't always just a thing you do for fun. It's to make a living. It's for your family. How many people have to fly to Paris to do business every month or whatever? I mean, I was frozen out of travel also. There were a lot of travel restrictions. And I was also kind of nervous about COVID But, you know, international travel basically ended for a year and when it didn't really have to. Again, if you take even Russia, where there's. If you believe the US Propaganda about Russia, it's a much stricter society. They were at a lockdown for like a week and a half. And that's it. I didn't know that. And then they asked people to wear masks in the supermarkets. Basically. That's it.

Somehow they didn't make the news.

Wonder why not CNN or Fox News?

Well, you know, it does go really. You mentioned something, too, about Canada and, like, its reputation. One of the things that really goes to show you, I know my focus on is like, how draconian, especially certain parts of Australia got.

Oh, my God.

The last thing you think of Australia's being like they had the wild, open bunch of rebellious.

I mean.

Exactly. But they got draconian. And then probably the last country in the world you thought would ever get as dictatorial and draconian was. Was Canada. And what they did. And I think it really opened up people's eyes to, okay, this isn't just, you know, this isn't just conspiracy. This isn't just, oh, it might happen on the fringe. Certain freedoms are being taken away and taken away quickly and frivolously. And if they can do it in certain places, they can do it where you're at. I think it's waking up a lot of people. I know I'm a big proponent of bitcoin, for instance, and, you know, cryptocurrency. It's been interesting how bitcoin has been getting the best marketing campaign ever from some of this stuff. Although it's world events are keeping it suppressed a little bit, but.

A little bit.

Yeah, a little bit.

Just a tad. Yeah.

But it is funny, I was like, man, I heard it said that sinking ships, I'm sorry, lifeboats on a sinking ship don't need a marketing department. It's like bitcoin. It doesn't need a marketing department.

The world's doing it for us. But look, you're right. I mean, rights were encroached on. And I think that a lot of Americans and Canadians were kind of shocked by it, that it could happen in their country, and they don't know what's next. We are approached by so many, many people from the US who are saying to us, amazingly. And I speak a lot about Russia, obviously, because I lived there for a long time and I know it very well, but I use it as sort of the extreme example of the opposite of the US which is how it's portrayed in American media. What has happened, what happened in the US by taking away these freedoms, the people, business people, entrepreneurs started feeling, oh, what can happen next? Where are we going to get hit next? And they decided for themselves that they need to diversify. Whether it's diversifying some of their financial assets abroad or diversifying their citizenship as well. The ability to be able to be assured that you can go and live somewhere else if you want to became an important issue. And they're not. Most, most people aren't living, leaving their country of residents. I mean, you know, you live in San Diego, you have a life there. You have the supermarket that you like going to, and you have the restaurant that you like going to. And just leaving may not be right now in your plans, but you want to have the ability to do it just in case. It's the same thing that my Russian clients say to us. They love their lives. They have a great life. They get to go to all the cool restaurants in Moscow and the supermarkets are amazing and the shopping centers and whatever makes for a good lifestyle. But just in case they want to have a plan B. And now, amazingly, Americans are speaking exactly like American entrepreneurs are speaking, just like Russian entrepreneurs are speaking, just in case we want to be able to get out if they start really encroaching on our rights even more, freezing our bank accounts, taking away our bank accounts, putting us in jail for honking our horns in front of parliament or things like that. Right.

Well, and it's. And for people who don't know, we talk about, you know, we brought up the conversation here of citizenship by Investment or having a dual citizenship or a plan B passport. This concept, if you're not real familiar, if you haven't heard any of my other shows where I've kind of mentioned this, it doesn't mean giving up your existing citizenship unless you choose to. But you can have multiple citizens, like how many, Are you able to say how many citizenships you personally have now?

Yeah, I have five.

That's great. So if anything happens in one, you can always travel.

Most of it wasn't actually my fault. I was born in the States and my parents just took me as a five year old to Israel and I got citizenship in Israel and then they took me as a 10 year old to Canada. So I got Canadian citizenship. The other citizenships I got in the Caribbean, it's part of my business. But yeah, the US until the late 80s, early 90s didn't really allow dual citizenship. But since then they have allowed it. You actually have to declare that you've gotten it on whenever you apply for a passport. You have to declare what other citizenships you've gotten, but they allow. The US allows any amount of citizenships as opposed to some other countries. Like Germany doesn't allow second citizenship. Ukraine, which is a big country, doesn't allow second citizenships either. Yes, if you want to become a, if you're a German and you want to become a citizen of Antigua or St. Kitts or whatever, you have to give up your German citizenship. Or if you want to become a German citizen, then you're a citizen of another country, your citizenship in the other country. But as an American or as a Canadian, if you want to take on 50 citizenships, you can do it without any issues. The US government doesn't mind. Now taking on citizenship is something, there's value in it because it allows you the assurance that you can go live in another country. You know, Americans have, the American, American citizens have the ability to travel around the world to a huge number of countries. I believe almost as much as, or just about as much somewhere around the same thing as St. Kitts. So Americans can travel visa free without having to think about getting a visa, which, I don't know, most Americans don't even know what a visa is. Visa is getting a permission from the country you're going to in advance of going. So US citizens can travel around, but they cannot live in any other country. They can only live in the US So they can't just pick up and say, okay, I want to live in Hungary. Yeah, and just go to Hungary and live there. You're not allowed. You're allowed to be a tourist there. You're allowed to be there 90 days every six months, so three months every six months. But, but you can't become a real resident if you want, you can't work there. As a matter of fact, if you want to become a resident of a country, every single country has different rules of how you become, how you legally become a resident or get the ability to live there. And citizenship is one of the ways that you can get the ability to live in a country. So by diversifying your citizenship, in other words, taking on the second and the third citizenship, amongst other things, you assure yourself of. Well, if I want to leave the US because I just don't, you know, I don't agree with what's going on here or I'm kind of sick and tired of being told to stay at home or whatever it is, or I feel like my city isn't a safe place. And by having a second citizenship, you have the ability to go and move to a country where you are legally entitled to live and you're guaranteed to live there. Citizenship as opposed to a residency permit. The US also has residency permits. They're called green cards. Citizenship is something that is permanent. Green cards as opposed to a citizenship. U.S. citizenship can be taken away under different circumstances. Not only the green card in the U.S. the permanent residency card in Canada and in other countries. So citizenship is really the only thing that guarantees that you're going to be allowed to live in another country. All the other types of residence permits, and there are many different types of them in different countries, do not give you a guaranteed right to live in that country. So for example, and the Caribbean is actually a really great good example. The Eastern Caribbean states have an association that's sort of like the European Union whereby a citizen of one country is sort of considered to be a citizen of all the other countries and has the same rights to live in those countries. It's called the oecs, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. So if you're a citizen of Antigua, you can live in St. Kitts or you can live in Dominica, or you can live in St. Lucia.

Oh, really nice. Is that kind of like the Europe, the Shenzhen zone in Europe?

Well, Shenzhen is the visa free zone, but it's, it's like being a European citizen which allows you to, to live in any country of the European Union. The Shenzhen Schengen. Sorry, yeah, Shenzhen is a city in China. Is the, the Schengen zone is, is a zone where, where there, just there are no borders between certain countries in Europe and you can just travel freely between those countries, but you can't live, you can't live in any of those countries. You can just travel.

Gotcha.

But, but with the Caribbean, you can, you can become a citizen of Saint Kitts and then go live in Saint Luke's or.

Okay, so when it comes down to. When it comes down to getting citizen second citizenship, obviously there's a lot of ways to do it. Some of those can be move somewhere, live there for an X number of years, the longer route, you know, apply, have all of this other stuff. And then there's citizenship by investment program, which is kind of like the VIP line at the nightclub. Right.

Well, it's not. I don't know if you'd call it the VIP line. It's. It's just you're doing it through an investment program, which clearly makes it go faster.

But maybe a better way of saying instead of VIP line, it's like bribing the bouncer. I got some money. Let me in.

Well, you know, it's actually a sensitive topic for the countries that do have these programs where they wouldn't like it if they heard you say that. That's fair point. Well, there's a reason for it. They don't just accept anyone. You can't just come to the country and plop down your money and say, okay, I'm here.

Background checks, et cetera.

The Caribbean, this is another interesting fact. The Caribbean countries, in order to apply for citizenship through investment, you first need to. How convenient. Speak to a person like me and a person who is mandated by a certain government and my company is mandated by all the citizenship by investment countries except for one in the Pacific, Vanuatu. You have to have a government license to represent, sort of like immigration lawyers, represent clients to the government. You have to apply to one of us and retain our services, and you have to submit an application package to the government. In that application government to package to the government are documentation showing that you don't have a criminal record, that your source of funds are. Are clean and good, and you made your money in an honest way and that you don't. You're. By giving you citizenship, the country won't risk its reputation, won't hurt its reputation. So, you know.

Right. They don't want to look like they're harnessing or. What is it? I can't think of the word. Or they don't want to look like they're giving shelter to all the bad players out there. Like they're just Trying to get away. So there's obviously filters in place to make sure that they're getting quality citizens as opposed to just anybody with cash.

Well, honestly, they have to, they, they have to do that because they're under the gun of the US and Canada and the UK who send representatives to these countries to, to check who they're accepting. So they have to be very, very careful about who they accept. And they, so you have to go through this, this application process. You hand in an application and the country sends out the application to an international due diligence company. Most of them are actually American due diligence agencies. One of them is Canadian. These are due diligence agencies that do due diligence for Fortune 500 companies that do due diligence for various countries. And they do really an incredible job job of due diligence. And then the country also uses its own local security forces as well as international partners such as Interpol or Europol or other lesser known organizations to do these background checks. And as a matter of fact, it's very interesting. You know, the US has a program called the EB5 program, which is a program whereby a foreign individual can invest half a million dollars in the US and get a green card and eventually become a citizen. Sort of the same thing. The little Caribbean countries like St. Kitts, a country of 50,000 people, or Antigua 90,000 or Dominica 70,000, they do more due diligence on their clients than the US Way more. As a matter of fact. A very funny, a very funny issue to me is that the US has pressured these little countries to stop accepting Iranians because Iran, because all the sanctions on Iran and they, But Iranians are one of the biggest investor immigrants in the U.S. so it's funny, I mean America accepts a lot of Iranian investors. It's sort of do as I say, don't do as I do. Exactly. So that's how you sort of, you make this application. Once your application is approved, then you have a choice of what kind of investment to make. There are different types of investments. The most popular type of investments are funnily not investments, but actually they're donations to the government, a one time fee to the government and that's it. You pay and you forget about it. There's an option of investing in certain types of real estate as well as paying a smaller fee to the government. But you can invest. Usually it's in hotel projects. Many of them are branded hotels like Marriott's or Hyatt or Kempinski, which is a bit of a Lesser known.

Lesser known in the US So it doesn't have to be investing in like your own residence. It can be.

It's actually, you can't. Generally there are very few residents that you can invest in. It's mostly these, mostly hotel projects.

Gotcha.

Okay. And, and all the major brands are sort of represented in this Hilton, Marriott and all that. And, OR in, in St. Lucia, they have a program where you can invest in St. Lucia government bonds, which you have to keep for either five years or seven years, depending on the amount that you're investing. And then there's zero coupon bonds, so you get back your principal after five to seven years. And that way you're kind of, you're not. What you're paying is the lost interest on your money or whatever you'd be making on your money for the next five years. In Montenegro, you have to do both. You have to both invest in a. You have to invest between either €250,000 or €450,000, depending on which part of the country you invest in, and you have to Give the government €200,000 in addition to which goes to various different government funds. Right.

Nuri, what about in some of these places, especially down in the Caribbean where it sounds like that's a big focus of yours, as well as, you know, Montenegro, et cetera. Yeah. But down there, if, as far as, like, if you, if you make the investment, question one is how long does it typically take, you know, from, you.

Know, start to finish to actually when you meet me? Until.

Yeah.

Until you get, until you get the citizenship.

Yeah.

Funnily, it. Very much of it depends on the, on the client, on the applicant himself, because the applicant has to be able to provide certain backup documentations like bank statements, birth certificates. In the US you need an FBI clearance certificate showing that, you know, a certificate from the FBI showing that you don't have a police record. And often people are kind of take some time to get this put together, but from when we get all the documentation until citizenship is issued, depending on the country. And it also depends on how busy the actual administrative office of the. In the country is. So if the, if the country, different countries become popular at different times, and suddenly there's a big amount of applicants in St. Lucia, Dominic or Sickets, and the administrative office gets really busy. And so time frames end up taking longer, but generally it's around three or four months from when we apply until. Until. Fantastic.

Okay. And then a question too. Are there do any of these programs, because this is a little different than Some of the visa programs that I've looked at. But do any of these programs have any requirement for time spent in that country? So if somebody wants to make that investment in one of these Caribbean nations, et cetera, they get their citizenship. Do they actually have to spend time there in order to maintain?

No. Well, no, except for Antigua, but that was sort of temporarily rescinded in Antigua. In the first five years of being a citizen, you need to come to Antigua and spend seven days.

Sounds horrible. Sounds like torture.

Yeah, no, it's rough. Well, actually, in all honesty, it's an added expense if you're like from Syria or Dubai or.

Oh, that's a good point.

Wherever you've got a family of six people and you have to fly business class, it's, you know, it's a, it's a $50,000 nut.

That's true. I guess if you're in the US especially in the east coast, it's a lot easier.

But yeah, it's often skipping a jump. It's a $250 ticket from Miami. Precisely $350.

Now, what about, you know, so, so for anybody who's like thinking about this, obviously there's a lot of angles, but, you know, there's Nevis and St. Kitts and I don't know, are those two. By the way, are those kind of like combined. Are those kind of the same thing or. No, I always hear them in reference in the same.

Yeah. The official name of the country is St. Christopher and Nevis.

Okay.

It's for short. But that's one place. They're two separate islands.

Okay.

About a seven minute boat ride from one to the other. And depending on how fast you're going, it can be faster, but. And it's sort of like Nevis is a province or a state in St. Kitts and Nevis. Gotcha. And they have like their own governor and all that, but it's, but it's one country. There's also Antigua. Antigua. The official name of Antigua is Antigua and Barbuda. Barbuda is a small island a little bit away from here that has about 1500 people. But it's really beautiful and lots of tourists go there, but it's sort of a province of Antigua.

Okay, perfect. Now, like I think I read recently, is it, is it St. Lucia that has the. Are they the ones with the lowest investment requirement currently?

Well, it depends on what you mean by the lowest. The investment levels vary depending on what kind of investment you're going to make and the size of your family. So officially, for one person, the donation to the government option is $100,000 in St. Lucia and the same in the Commonwealth of Dominica. So both of those, if you want to say cheapest.

What if you're like a married couple? Is it double?

No, it's. God, I'm too old to remember all the combinations, but no, it's not double. I think it's 135,000, I believe, in Dominica.

Okay. And that's a donation. That's not. You're not making an investment in real estate that has the ability to appreciate. It's not an asset that you're buying. It's a donation.

It's pure, pure donation. But the cost of the real estate option is $200,000 in Dominica. 300,000 is the minimum in St. Lucia. But I think they're going to be bringing that down to be a little more competitive, I think. Think. And in addition to that, there are government fees that vary between 35 and $75,000 as well. Okay, in addition. Yeah, in addition, is that on the.

Real estate side or is that on the real estate? Gotcha.

On the real estate, the donation is just a donation. Okay. So the idea with the real estate is that, you know, you're spending 75,000 plus 200, you're going to have the option of keeping sort of a share in a hotel or selling it later on and hopefully recouping your principal and maybe even making a profit later on. Right.

And I guess this all depends. There's no one right way, because it all depends on the individual, what they're looking to do, et cetera. But I'm curious at how you see a donation versus buying real estate.

I'll tell you, it's something like 90% people do the donation. It's very hard, especially since most of the people who are getting their second citizenships are from countries where they don't even speak English. China's the biggest market for second citizenship now. It's changing a little bit with the US coming in, but about 90% just do the donation. They just want to pay and forget about it and not have to, like, look at the risk of owning real estate. And what do you do with the real estate? If you're, you know, there's. You have to manage real estate. The taxation issues, you have to sell it. Selling it is never easy. So most people just prefer to do the donation they take. You know what they say, your first loss is your best loss. Yeah.

That'S a good point. I know I've got a I've got a close friend of mine who is doing consulting marketing advisory work for a developer down in Nevis. That is. I know they are. They're probably a couple years away from having the, the property done. I don't know where they are like breaking ground, but they're developing property there. I guess it's a, it could be considered a hotel, but it's designed for, you know, offering investment for citizenship by investment programs. I don't know that many details on it. I just know that he was, he's working on this currently.

I probably know who he is. Well, I don't know if you know.

My friend because he's doing more just like the initial marketing consult. But he's not the. I can't remember the name of the guy who's doing the development. When we get off of this, I'll try to find out and see if you guys know each other.

Yeah, and it's again, it's. These countries are very small. They're like, they're little villages in many ways. So everybody is somebody's cousins I imagine. And so you, you get to know people very, very, very quickly. Right.

Do you see though, like when you look at the ones that are the real estate where like kind of like this, which would be investing in like a hotel project or something that has, you know, there's ideally a return on that with I don't even know what the projected returns on a lot of these projects are. Mining those. Do you see those as good investments or how do you see those?

I think it's often hard to mix business with pleasure. A lot of the. Because most of the potential investments are in the hospitality sector. I think the hospitality sector is very risk averse to economic cycles. And if you have just a tiny little economic hiccup in the US then everyone stops traveling to the Caribbean. And so for me that's an inherent risk that, that always concerns me on the one hand. On the other hand, my company was involved in real estate development as well in the Caribbean. We developed 45 villa development that we're in the process. My company actually just sold our share, not development. But there are certain risks that you need to understand. Well and so the donation option for me is often a better choice because it's a more educated choice. It's hard to be really educated about real estate. I don't know anything about real estate in San Diego and I've been there and really understanding it is very difficult. On the other hand, everything is so individual also that maybe you want to Own a share in the Hyatt just so that you can tell your friends you own a share in the Hyatt. And it also depends sort of on your cost of money. It's more expensive to invest in the real estate than making the donation, but you can then recoup your investment later on. So it really depends on cash flow issues and things like that to be sure you're not going to be making 10x on your money like you do if you invest in crypto. Right. It's not that kind of an investment. It's a 2, 3, 4% annual investment. Kind of boring, but, but kind of safe and kind of nice. And also generally these hotel projects allow for you to be able to go stay at the hotel and that's kind of a nice thing.

Exactly.

So, yeah, I'm sure you'd be happy to go visit your friend in Neva.

Yeah, precisely. Do you typically make recommendations on one program down there versus the other? Like the St. Lucia one or the.

It really, it really depends on, on when we meet a client. Most of our clients are from faraway countries and they, they say to us, hey, can you get us a Caribbean passport? And so then we sit down with them and we look at their, you know, their, their size of their family and, and their net worth, their. What they're looking for in terms of cash flow, donation versus real est. And depending on that, we generally will suggest one or the other programs. What we also, because we work with all these different countries, it's sort of hard to divide them all up. If somebody says to us, listen, we want Dominica, we're like, let's go, baby. We're into Dominica. We generally will follow what the client comes to us and what the client wants, unless they just don't know. And then we'll just sort of analyze the situation. But we love all the countries equally. Right. Well, how do you like me playing politics here?

I like it. Well, let me put you on the spot for. I'll just say for me we'll do a role play. And I know we're not going to.

Go deep in this because. Don't. Don't make me publicly choose a country.

Okay, I won't do that. I won't do that. Maybe we can talk offline about that for sure. But yeah, but I was curious about some of the different. I think doesn't Nevis and St. Kitts, what is the donation amount there?

The donation amount until last December was 150,000 and now it went up so to 195,000 for a family of. Up to a family of four. However, there's actually, there's a special kind of program that they have. You're going to, you're going to get quite a laugh out of this. They did a deal with a development company, a foreign development company to build a prison, literally a prison. Their prison is very, very old and decrepit and they need a new prison and they can't really afford it. So they made a deal with this company, that company put up the money to build the prison and the company in order to recoup its investment because they're not going to own the prison. And the Caribbean doesn't have commercial prisons like the U.S. as a matter of fact, I think only the U.S. has commercial prisons. They just like keep them in longer.

Land of the free.

Yeah. Right. So it's basically, it's a prison for the government to run and have. But the way that this investor is, or the developer is going to be recouping his investment will be by sort of selling units, although not physical units, but people selling cells. Not selling cells. Right. Yeah. Although if you'd like to buy a.

Cell, I guarantee that would, that would actually probably people.

But it's, but it's, it's a cell, but it's in Cara in the Caribbean, so it can't be so bad. But for $175,000 instead of 195, you can do your investment through this development. And basically it's a donation to build the prison.

Gotcha. Now, are there other benefits to one of those, like that island versus any.

Other places you can go the country of? There are different visa regimes, places where you can go and get. And where you can travel visa free. So for example, if you have citizenship in Dominica, you can travel to China visa free, which Americans can't do. But if you're a citizen of St. Kitts, you cannot travel to China. In the country of Grenada has an agreement with the United States, actually, whereby citizens of Grenada can have access to a special type of work permit that allows you, if you make a certain investment in a business in the US to move to the US and live there and work in the business. It's called the E2 program. So. So there are actually people who buy citizenship in Grenada in order to avail themselves of the possibility of getting a visa, a work permit in the U.S. okay. Because not every citizen of every country has the right to get this type of visa to the US okay, question.

On this aspect, and this is kind of a Broad question, but typically if somebody, if an American citizen gets a citizenship down there, and I'll just use Nevis as an example, and then decides to relinquish their U.S. citizenship, assuming that, you know, they're upstanding citizen, etc. But now they, you know, they just have that citizenship. Is it challenging to get entry visas back into the United States after you've relinquished your citizenship to come back and.

Visit for, you know, there are a lot of, there are a lot of rumors about this situation that, you know, will the government allow you to come back to the US if you've given up your US Citizenship? And the truth is that when a foreigner applies for a US Visa, what that foreigner has to prove to a consular official in an embassy of the United States outside. There are only embassies of the United States outside of the United States.

Yeah.

Is he has to prove that he will to the satisfaction of the consular official, or sometimes they're called visa officers. He has to prove that he will, or he or she, they will leave the US within the term of that visa and will not break the terms and conditions of those visas. So if it's just a tourist visa and you're not allowed to work in the US you're not going to work in the US So the visa officer looks at you and says, on the balance of probabilities, I believe this person because he has a house and a dog and a cat in St. Kitts, most likely he will leave the US and within the term of his visa, and most likely because he has a really good job in St. Kitts, he's going to go back to St. Kitts and I don't have to worry about it. So. By giving up your U.S. citizenship, you're making a pretty serious statement that you do not want to live in the U.S. correct. And so if you apply for a visa, then they already know you don't want to overstay your visa.

Yeah. You've already went to great things to get out.

You just, you broke the bank paying the exit tax. Yeah. To get out. Why would you want to come back?

Good point.

So generally, generally, unless it's like political issues and, and kind of things that we don't talk about in terms of the US can refuse visas for all sorts of reasons and just don't like you or whatever, but if it's the average Joe, although it's not the average Joe that gives up their US Citizenship, but if it's the average Joe, then they actually get visas to visit the U.S.

Oh, that's good. That's good to hear.

It's not. It's not that much of a challenge because just a priori, you've shown that you don't want to live there. I don't want to be there, but I want to go visit my cousin, and that's, you know, good. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, people have been refused, but generally they are accepted. They get visas.

Okay, that's good to know. Are you seeing much happen? With a lot of the rise of cryptocurrency and crypto millionaires and people looking to obtain.

There are a lot of. Sorry to interrupt you. There are a lot of big fancy names in the crypto world who are. Have gained citizenship in the Caribbean. Roger Vere is one of them.

Roger, I was thinking about him.

Yeah, everybody talks about him all the time. Poor guy. He bought property, right. Like within a few feet of my development in St. Kitts. So those are the big names, and they're a bunch of other big names. Calvin Eyre, if you know who he is. But now more and more people, we're seeing more and more people, and we're being asked by more and more people who have a lot of their net worth in crypto coming forward. And as a matter of fact, there's a big crypto convention in April and May. In April in Miami. Sorry. And there's a lot of talk about citizenship, people being there. And in all honesty, myself, my company as a firm and other firms are actually now targeting the crypto crowd because it seems like the crypto crowd. While now crypto has been hit hard over the last few months, it. People who have succeeded are also looking for diversification. Everybody understands, you know, once you've made your first million dollars, you need to start now worrying about how to keep it. And making it is the easy part. It's. It's keeping it as the home, the harder part. Very true. And not. Not. It's not always true that making is the easy part, but people underestimate how.

Hard keeping it is.

But hard. It's very, very hard keeping it because you obviously have to do something with your money, and when you're doing things with your money, you're taking risk. Yeah, but. But. So a lot of the people who have made their money in the crypto sphere are looking to diversify, and often they're looking for property. Their whole life is in cyberspace. So in terms of diversification, they want to have hard assets. They already don't really trust money, real money. But a hard asset is a hard Thing not to trust.

Well, and that's exactly where I know my wife and I have been at as well. I'm not as big of a crypto guy as a lot of the folks out there, but I've done very well in it. But we just purchased a property in Portugal that we'll spend some time in and then do renting it out the rest of the time. We didn't spend enough of our own capital to qualify for the golden Visa over there, unfortunately. But we did get a loan on it at 1.9% interest, which was amazing.

That's nice. Yeah.

30 year fixed, 20% down the other 80% at 1.9 for a three bedroom, three bath down in Lagos, Portugal.

And pretty happy about that free money.

Yeah. I now granted the closing costs I realized are dramatically higher than they are.

In the US probably have to pay notaries a percentage of the purchase price.

Well, yeah, I mean all in it was about 7 and a half percent.

Of the price was the transfer tax closing cost. Yeah.

So I think the, I think the total cost of loan comes out to about like four and a half or so when you really look at it. But at the end of the day I bring this up because it's also, that is one of the things when, where I'm looking to put my money at this point in my life. We don't have kids, we're not going to, but it is. I would much rather buy international, you know, international real estate in places that I'd want to spend some time in that can also be high demand and be able to get a yield on when I'm not using them because I don't like, I'm not looking to, you know, buy the fancy cars anymore and all the other stuff like that. But I'm definitely looking like diversifying and almost like trophy property style real estate is, is where a lot of my focus is at the moment. So you know, I've looked in which.

In an uncertain world, real estate is the most certain thing.

Correct, Exactly. Do you do much, speaking of Portugal, do you do much in Portugal with things from golden visa to citizenship over there?

Yeah, we do not a lot. Our concentration is Montenegro. We sort of advise the government on how to create the program a bunch of years back. So we're very, we're very active in Montenegro and we try to concentrate more on citizenship rather than visas. As I told you, citizenship is the most permanent type of status that you can get. And often people kind of get confused between a residence permit and citizenship. So they don't really understand that residence is a temporary measure. So we try to have our clients explain to our clients the difference and convince them that citizenship is a better option. But certainly we do work with Portugal and more and more there seems to be some interesting Portugal. It's a nice.

And I imagine that most of the clients you're dealing with. So most of the clients who are interested in visa are more, I would imagine, the digital nomad style. They want to go live in different places.

Right.

So that's why they want the visa and they want the option to live there without versus protection.

The nomad visas are something that have been created just recently during COVID mostly by smaller countries that. Where, for example, Antigua created it. Actually, I helped the Prime Minister come up with the criteria. It's a very simple process. You make an online application and you get the ability to live here for two years. What the governments of the countries who have these nomad visas are looking for is not an upfront fee, but they want you to come rent a house, go to a lot of restaurants, spend money in the real economy. And so it's. It's a relatively easy thing, though temporary as well.

Makes sense.

And in all honesty, you know, there's only so much you can be moving around the world. You know, as I told you, I was born in the us, grew up in Israel, Canada, Rock, Russia and Diga. And at a certain point, you know, even I'm 54 years old. But even before that. You want to stop being a nomad.

Yeah, it sounds exciting. Until you start doing it. Until it becomes your life.

Yeah, it's fun, you know, and especially it depends on your age. Also, it depends on your family composition. You can't be a nomad if your kid is in grade two.

Right, Good point.

He has to go to school somewhere. So, you know, it's. It's for a certain type of person at a certain type of age and position in life to be a nomad. I mean, I. I can't be a nomad. Yeah, my kid is in grade six. And by the way, I'm showing you that I'm Canadian by saying grade six instead of sixth grade the way you, You. That's the difference between Canada and the U.S. it's the way we talk about grades. And in Canada there's better beer. But. So, yeah, my kid is in grade six. He has to go to the same class every single day. I can't be a nomad. I mean, I can travel in business, but we can't. So as soon as you have a child of school age, that whole nomad thing goes away.

It really does.

Having said that, we actually had clients during COVID when the kids were in virtual school. We had an interesting client from Siberia of all places, who was planning on sending their son to a very upscale private school. Great. Five or fifth grade, very upscale private school in Miami. But boom, Covid hit and the borders closed and the kid couldn't go to school. And actually the school went online. And so the time difference between Siberia and Miami is 12 hours. So the poor kid was starting school at 8 at night. Oh, and had to go till to like 4 in the morning.

Oh, hell no.

And hell no. They did it for a little while and then I started screaming at them and I said, stop that. Come to Antigua, which is the same time zone, and at least your kid is going to see sunlight.

Exactly.

And so they came to Antigua and they lived here for about a year and a half and then they sent their kid to school in Switzerland. But yeah, I mean, that was. So there are exceptions to the rule. But basically this whole nomad, Nomad, digital nomad lifestyle is for young people who are not, you know, who are, who aren't tied down to a family.

I would agree with that.

So it's not that realistic from, from most, most people. And in all honesty, you get tied down to a family in your 30s generally. So it's, you know, it's for people who are in their 20s, but people in their 20s are just starting to make money. Most of them have a lot of money and they can't afford to be digital nomads anyway.

Yeah, exactly. When I imagine the people who are most interested in the visa programs, they're wanting to be a little more nomadic and be able to go live there. And I would imagine that the people who are more interested in the citizenship, especially citizenship by investment programs, are more interested in protecting themselves, giving themselves options and flexibility just in case, as opposed to wanting, you know, easier travel restrictions.

Well, they want, they want easy travel also. That's an important thing for a lot of from, because a lot of the clients for these citizenship programs are from countries where they're very harder in their ability to travel. But, but yeah, for Americans, as I said, it's, it's, it's sort of a plan B just in case, you know, Biden comes and takes all your money and stuff.

You know, I brought this up on for personal reasons before we started recording, but, you know, my wife is a dual citizenship of Brazil in the U.S. do you know much about Brazil's programs or citizenship there. If there's.

I, I honestly don't. There was, there was talk a little while ago, a bunch of years ago of them creating a citizenship program, but I think it's too big of a country and it wouldn't really. You wouldn't be able to attract too many people then to put a dent in there.

Yeah, that's. That's a great point. It's not like they need citizens. It's. It is interesting though from a really big macro level where. And I've talked about this with a lot of friends and whatnot offline, but this concept that, you know, all of us were born into a country and that's for most of us, that's just who you're a citizenship of. Right. Unless you get proactive with companies like yours. But it'll be really interesting as nations state. As the whole concept of a nation state starts to blur and citizenship become. We are much more. Increasingly more global to see countries start to compete for the most productive citizens. And I mean, it's really the way it should be. Right? Like offer. Offer better. Offer better incentives for productive.

Well, that is happening actually as we speak. There is something in, in the US in Canada and the UK that is called the startup visa.

Okay, I've heard of that.

The. The countries are competing for entrepreneurs who will. Who have really good business ideas that are unique for the country and they'll allow people if they. Under all different criterias in different countries. And it's a long story, but basically if you have a really good idea, they're a business idea and you can figure out the financing for it. But you need to be in Canada to do it or in the uk the US they'll allow you to get a startup visa. It's a very good. It's a very good program for the various countries and they are competing. They really are competing for smart people.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, it kind of makes me. I'm only familiar with this kind of at a top level, but I'm paying attention to what's going on in El Salvador because they've really bitcoin and been very, very pro bitcoin trying to get a bigger crypto community down there. It's entertaining as hell to follow their president on Twitter. He's not the most presidential tweeter, but he is hilarious. But do you have any thoughts on that? About what the things they're doing which seem to be. I mean, it's very pro bitcoin and it seems like they're going to be trying to compete for more productive citizens. But do you have any thoughts on that?

I only know what I read in the press, and it's hard for me. I hate talking about places. And just recently there's a big Twitter ad about or not ad, but somebody posted a whole little video on Twitter suggesting what they should be doing. And I really don't know where it stands. I don't think it's going to be a very easy program to create. And I know they're very, very, very pro crypto.

By the way, are you talking about the post by Katie the Russian?

Yeah.

That's so funny that I pieced those two things together.

That's hilarious. Well, she's very popular. She's really, she's great. I mean, I love what she does. You know, she's not, she's, you know, so she's not connected to any of the countries. She's not mandated by any of the governments. You know, she doesn't really, you know, she's just sort of on Twitter as a. Doing a lot of good marketing. Sure. But, you know, we, we have a whole division of our company that does government advisory role. We've advised governments and are advising governments on how to create these programs. And she just, you know, she just put out like a little nice Twitter, which kind of took off. It was kind of funny. But I think El Salvador is going to have a bit of an issue in creating. It's hard to create these programs. Oh, I imagine there's a lot of, I mean, I can't tell you how many countries we've spoken to, including. When I say countries, I mean like the president, the foreign minister, the justice minister, the, the lots of people. Next week we're having a meeting with a country, and I'm not going to say who it is, but we're meeting a subcommittee of Parliament, well, actually of the government made up of the Minister of Economics, of Finance, Interior, and we're going to have a zoom call to teach them about these programs and maybe pitch them to allow us to create it. But it takes years to create these programs. To pass a law is not. The president says, okay, I want it, and it happens. But you have to go through all sorts of really difficult bureaucratic processes. And that's why I thought it was kind of cute that this Katie, I don't know her, she does great.

Good publicity for her, for sure.

It was terrific. But, you know, she can't, you know, say, hey, president, do this. Yeah, it doesn't happen that way. No, no, no, that's not. You can't imagine. We were involved in the. In the Montenegro citizenship program. It took them years and numerous governments, like two prime ministers to get the program created. Wow. Two prime ministers and then ministers who were in charge of creating the program. Numerous ones. First we started speaking with one government, then we had to speak to the next government, and it literally was two different governments who were asking for advice and, you know, different people. And it took years to create the program. For it to get through Parliament, you have to do. You have to go speak to your people and your, you know, you have to get civil society involved. You have to get the opposition parties involved. You have to. It's a complicated thing to do because it's a very. In many ways, it's a very sexy topic. Citizenship is pretty much every country, when the regular people, when they think that their citizenship is going to be sold, they get all nervous about their birthright being sold. And there's always political opposition, opposition to these programs. Although when the political opposition then gets voted into the government, they adopt these programs and run with it like crazy. They. They. They first, they curse it, and then when they have it, they. It's sort of like the, you know, the Republicans who scream and shout about how much the Democrats spend.

Yeah.

But then the Republicans are the biggest spenders of their own government of anyone, of course. I mean, let's just go there.

Are you saying they're all basically the same?

I would never say that, ever. They're all the same except for personality. Right, Exactly. Obviously. But so. Yeah, so I think it's. It's. It's going to be a challenge. You know, there's also, in the Western Hemisphere, there's. There's Big Brother who is very concerned about these programs, and you need to, you know, you need to bow to Big Brother and, you know, have them approve it as well. Yeah. So it's. It's. It's not. It's not such a simple thing. It's just like a little tweet. Yeah. It's a difficult process, but I like what he's thinking and I like what, you know, and I'm sure he'll eventually reach out to, you know.

When you say he, are you talking.

About the El Salvador?

El Salvador. That's what I thought.

Okay, good. Yeah. I imagine that eventually he'll reach out to people, you know, whether it's my company or to other companies who are, you know, who have done work with governments in the past and ask for real, real advice. Yeah.

What's the process and just start sketching it out.

Yeah, but I think for now he's sort of feeling his way through that. Having said that, there's also another issue is that the European Union just recently announced that they're against these programs. Oh really? Yeah. And very seriously announced that there's a very serious process going on within the European Commission and the European Parliament where they've announced that they want these programs phased out by 2025.

Now, even the ones like in places like that. Well, now is like Montenegro globally, places.

Like Montenegro and Malta and the golden Visas and things like that. The European Parliament is very much. Has been talking a lot about how much they're against it and they. Now, the fact that the European Parliament is against it doesn't necessarily mean that Europe will stop it. There's all sorts of. Europe is an incredibly bureaucratic place, the European Union. And so in order to make any decision, all 27 parliaments have to vote to make a decision. And to get 27, forget about it, people to agree on anything that's hard enough is hard enough to get a parliament of 300 people, 27 parliaments of 300 people to agree on everything takes years. And that's why the European Union is incredibly inefficient organization. So, you know, there's going to be, you know, on the one hand, it's second citizenship and citizenship by investment has become a huge industry and more accepted within the world. And you know, I think a lot of governments understand that the safeguards within the system are very strong. On the other hand, the feeling of selling citizenship is something that many countries don't like. There's a lot of opposition to it. And so I think it's a question, especially in the future of what is going to happen? Is the feeling of selling citizenship going to take over and people will be against it, or will governments understand that this is an incredibly innovative way, way to cheaply attract foreign direct investment, especially in countries that really need it.

Absolutely. Well, and mind share because if somebody's a citizenship, if they want to escape, you know, it's a, it's, it's really at a. An excellent way theoretically to, to, to compete.

Yes, absolutely.

So what, what else are you seeing on the like coming down the pipe besides that, like, are there any other projected changes like positive or negative in this space?

Well, I think one of the things is is this European Union, where the European Union is going to be going with this. But the biggest trend that we're seeing, the thing that we're now talking most about. And Katie, the Russian, who I guess I'm plugging her, is trying to market to that market is the US interest in second citizenship.

I think it's growing and growing. This has not been a topic among friends of mine until the past few years, of course, and it's been growing and growing. And granted a lot of my colleagues and peers are also in the digital space. So they have the ability to from a laptop which you know, these days more and more people are getting that. So it's becoming on their minds of. I think a lot of times it starts off as looking to just be nomadic, to just go live somewhere else. But then as their success increases and they have more assets, I think they really start to think about citizenship as well. Especially now with global turmoil.

Well, I'll tell you that's also, you know, an interesting issue is who. What's your typical client? You know, your typical client is generally I categorize sort of in a jokingly but half seriously. I categorize rich people in different ways. So there's, you know, people who have made between or have a net worth of between 1 and 5 million people, $5 million. I call them the poor millionaires, right?

Starters.

They're starting. It's a starter upper. You know, they have the house that's worth a little bit and they have a bunch of cars and but they don't all fly business class all the time. They go, when they go to the supermarket, $1 million net worth. You're looking at the cost of milk even at a million dollars of net worth. Because your net worth may be all tied up in hard assets in your car, in your house. And you don't have that much money to buy the expensive milk, the organic milk versus the inorganic milk. And so that's between 1 and 5. And you have certain behavior patterns of what somebody does. When they've got the net worth of between 1 and $5 million, they either they start buying a house, they buy a little bit of a nicer car, maybe they'll expand their business because that's a big part of their net worth. When you get to the between five and like $20 million. That's who I call the middle class millionaire. And there you're already buying. You might buy yourself a second how A second home. You might buy yourself a jet Ski or you're not driving, you buy yourself a Lambo, whatever, things like that. I only know the word lambo for my 12 year old son. I call it a Lamborghini. But he gets mad at me when I do that. Exactly. So he said, papa, you're sold. So anyway, and then when you've got a net worth of 20 and above, then we're talking real money. And now you're chartering flights. You're not just flying business class. You're starting to live like you're a rich person. And generally our target audience, if you want to put it that way, is the one to five, the poor millionaires. Generally, a person won't spend more than 10% of their net worth worth on second citizenship. So the second citizenship is somewhere between 100 and 200,000. So you generally won't see people who are under a million dollars or they're generally between one and two, three or four million dollars of net worth. And that's when they start thinking about it. And you know, when they, when it's also when they start thinking about different things, you know, like the Rolex, the more expensive Rolex, the crazy Rolex. So I think that that's who our target generally, our audience is people in the one to $10 million net worth. People who are at 10 and higher have generally done it already, if they're going to do it. So we, you know, that's your typical audience. And a lot of the crypto people in the States are in that 1 to 10 million bracket, and that's why they're interested in it. It's their time. Hello? Hello.

So sorry, I was on mute. I didn't even know I clicked mute because it was a dog bark and I was talking.

It's okay, I like dogs. You can let them bark.

I was saying, or at least they, or at least they were in that space back in like October, November.

Yeah. Now they're in the 500,000.

Now they're like, maybe that citizenship can wait, but yeah, until it comes back up. Yeah, Like, I got that whole McDonald's meme that came out once everything crashed. Everybody was joking that, all right, now I'm back working at McDonald's.

So that's, you know, but in all seriousness, even, you know, obviously, you know, the crypto market has come off a bit. A lot. There's still a lot of people in that, you know, million and up.

Absolutely.

To a few million dollars who are in them, who are very much in the market. And they're understanding now how volatile their businesses, their investments are. I mean, with crypto you just sat on Ethereum and you do nothing and you make 10x or 30x or 50x or whatever it is. But now you understand it doesn't work that way.

Absolutely.

And the more you see these waves, and you had the wave with bitcoin a few years ago where it tanked. The more you see these waves, the more you understand these people who are young and new in the business world, they start to understand the need for diversification.

Yeah. And I think that's becoming more evident all the time with this, in this world. So when it comes to working with clients like. So for instance, if myself, if any of my, if any of my listeners, et cetera, want you.

And your listeners will give you all discounts, that's for sure. Love it, love it.

75% off. That's awesome.

You're gonna pay.

What did you say? You're gonna pay for the.

I was gonna pay the listeners.

There you go.

Because I love your listeners so much, you know, so.

But I mean, the kind of work you guys do, you do like when people are serious about now pursuing.

We do the legal work of making and representing clients to governments to various government agencies. Again, you can think of us as immigration lawyers where we directly have hand in an application to the government. And then sort of the word negotiation is probably wrong, but we answer the questions that the governments have and all of the citizenship by investment countries, you can't go to the government on your own. You have to use an intermediary. And they do that for a lot of reasons, including the fact that they just have applicants from all over the world who are Bangladesh, India, China, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, whatever. And for applicants, it's their first time making an application and they don't know how to make the application. And the government doesn't want to have to deal with half done applications. And they want real, you know, fully completed applications. Sure. So we do these applications. It just becomes too much of a mess. So they license local service providers to, to make these applications. And you know, clients come to us either directly, they find us in various different ways and, or they come through other sort of introducers. And there are a lot of people on the Internet who are sort of promoting the idea of citizenship. And then when client comes to them, basically they then introduce them to companies like mine.

Right. So they, they're in essence, they're doing the marketing, they're getting, they're generating demand, but they're not necessarily fulfilling that with all of the legal nuances.

Well, they can't. They generally. They can't. Yeah. That's not their business. They're not legally entitled to. So they make an introduction. Often they don't even really introduce the Client. They sort of, you know, people don't really understand the process.

Yep.

That they're getting into. A lot of people don't really do the research and understand exactly what, what, what they're doing. But you know, they, they, that they, they don't know that they actually have to use a service provider who is locally licensed in each country. And so they, they think, you know, if I, you know, use the services of somebody, some company in the US or something. But you can't. That company in the US just subcontracts to me.

Right. And that makes perfect sense. One more question here. In general, not looking for like exact numbers but like generally speaking. So you know, if somebody was looking to do a citizenship by investment via donation, whether it was in some of the countries you talked about, such as St. Lucia Kits, Nevis, et cetera, when you combine all the fees, like if it's one of you I think you mentioned St. Lucia was like 131000 for an individual donation. When you combine all in. Is this something that, because obviously you guys have your fees that help. It's not, you know, you have to add in that along with the other stuff you said it's maybe about a four month process, give or take.

I need to eat.

What's that?

I need to eat.

Yep, exactly. What should somebody basically budget for the kind of all in expenses on something like that? And I know it depends.

It depends. You know, there's, there's, you know, the different pricing in different countries and for different markets and different pricing, in all honesty are we are not the cheapest out there. For example, there are people who work for cheaper, people work for more. And you know, there's, there's the, there's the Lambo and then like the Toyota or whatever.

Sure.

And so generally over and above all the government fees, you're generally in the 30 to 40 to $50,000. Okay.

Yeah, that's the range I was looking for just to see if it was.

Something like that is, you know, we don't even really have a price list. We look at every individual and depending on how hard the application is going to be, we will price, we have a range and we'll price within that range.

Makes perfect sense.

So for example, just recently.

We had.

A client who was refused citizenship in Malta. So now he's got this black mark on him and he now wants, but he still wants a second citizenship. And we think, we believe, we've done a lot of research on him, a lot of due diligence, a lot of Our own compliance work. And we believe that he was wrongly refused. Oh, that's. And we believe that he was refused because there was mis. It was misidentified. I think. We think that Malta thought that he. Because he had the same name as a person who was in jail for murder, that he was in jail for murder, although he wasn't in jail. Oh, wow. Which is kind of funny. Yeah. But they wouldn't accept the explanation. He wasn't my client. And so I don't know all the details. But, for example, with him, we've had to, you know, we have to charge more because we know that we're going to have a lot of explanation to do. And already we have to overcome a lot of negative stuff about him. Usually with what we call the poor millionaires who are a little bit younger and their name isn't in the press too much or, you know, they have smaller assets and they've had less complicated lives, which they know the fees are lower.

Right.

So it just sort of depends on who, where and what.

Okay, fantastic. You know, one other thing that just popped in my mind because I just noticed this. It was on your website. This kind of like, don't believe anything.

You read on the Internet, by the way.

Exactly. But with Portugal, when it comes to, you know, options over there, and I don't know if this is just for the golden visa or if this is actually for the passport, because does Portugal even have, like a citizenship by investment program or. There is. There's only the, like the gold, which is a path.

It's a path to the citizenship. After six years, you can get citizenship if you pass a Portuguese language test.

Right.

Amongst other requirements.

Right. Okay. So, yeah, so. And I know that you can invest, for instance, like in a. In real estate there, but there's also, like, venture funds that you can invest in for funds.

Correct. Right.

Do you know anything about the requirements for those venture funds? And I'm asking because I do have a friend who is starting to explore comma fund. Yeah. I have a friend in Portugal who is exploring, creating a venture fund for these purposes.

But.

And I know he's talking to some people, but we were just chatting about it at a high level and I didn't know anything about that. I knew that a venture fund aspect exists listed over there, but I didn't know what types of.

I know again, because I'm just. My general knowledge, you need to be registered and with the financial services authorities of Portugal as a fund, sort of like the Sec. Of Portugal, and you are allowed to invest the funds that you receive into your fund, you're allowed to invest 60% of that in Portugal in either real estate or publicly traded securities, and you can actually invest then 40% of your funds in other types of securities outside of Portugal.

Okay, interesting, because I know that one of the things he had identified a property that was worth any. Somewhere between 10 and 20 million. And it was. It could be like part commercial, there could be an option to have, you know, boutique residential stuff on there, but he was looking at that. He has. He had some ideas for making that almost like a. A big retreat center, etc. Yeah, it's. It's on, I don't know, 10, 20 acres and absolutely gorgeous. I've seen photos. But one of the concepts is if we. I say we. This is what he was saying is if we create a venture fund, get it all licensed, et cetera, could we open that up for external investments of people with half million euros or more in order to facilitate that golden Visa through that purchase?

Yeah, I believe you can. But I'd be stepping outside my boundaries to be able to give you the right kind of advice.

I appreciate that. Yeah. This is just a conversation I had about a week ago, and I just totally remembered it when we were talking. So this pretty much brings us. This has been a fantastic interview. I've learned so much, and I really appreciate.

I'm happy that it worked out.

It did. Yeah. And it is also different than just hearing about almost the marketing. Why, you know, why should I do this? Et cetera. Like, for those of you who've listened to Andrew Henderson on Nomad, from Nomad Capitalist on the show, who is here, I don't know, maybe about six months ago or so. I can't remember exactly the date. We talked a lot about just the idea of second citizenship and why and opening people's ideas of the fact that it's possible. But this really gave us an opportunity to dig into the technicalities of how it works and how it doesn't and what you have to be really wary of. So I think this is a fantastic. That was a perfect segue into why and then how. And it sounds like if you. If people want to get ahold of you because they've been considering this or they haven't, but now they are. What is the best way to get ahold of you? I know your Apex Capital Partners is your website. Are there any other.

That's. That's. I mean, I'm happy for people to write to me directly. My. My. My email address Is N as a Norman K A T Z cap A P E X C a p dot org Perfect. And you know, and you can look on our site at ApexCapital Partners, and I bet you that if people contacted you, you'd direct them to us. Love it.

Love it.

Well, that's. I would hope.

Of course I would. So. Well, this is fantastic.

Thank you for the plug.

Yeah, my pleasure. Are there any particular nuts you're trying to crack? It sounds like one of the biggest things is just to get some more awareness out there, especially to the US Market. I think you mentioned that as this is on the tip of people's minds, that letting them know that there are resources out there to help them. But are there any other things that potentially myself or my listeners, you could jog our ideas?

I think number one for Americans, this is a possibility. Americans are just starting to think about it. I want to educate the market about it just because it seems to be a market. And so, you know, obviously as a businessman, I want. I want to be able to sell my services. And selling your services, in this type of service, you first need education. I also think that there's a need for it. There's a lot of people like you who are really, you know, wondering and thinking and looking and it's hard to find. You know, I jokingly said don't believe anything you see on the Internet, but there's so much stuff on the Internet that's just not true and not real and not. And put out by people who don't really understand the specific legalities of the issues. Because there's just. There's so many marketing firms out there who know how to market, but they don't really understand the programs. And a lot of them are overseas and in all sorts of countries. They don't even speak English. So I think it's important to watch out who you deal with. Also you have to make sure, like when you're looking to work with a lawyer, you want that lawyer to be a member of a bar. In other words, to have the right to work as a lawyer, you don't want a lawyer who doesn't have the right to work as a lawyer.

Good point.

It's just one of those things. And you. So, you know, you don't want to work with an accountant who's not an accountant. So it's important to sort of figure out who you're working with, who you're trusting, because it's. Because it's such an industry that's so niche and unusual for most and because you really generally only do this one time in your life, you want to make sure that you're speaking to the right people who not only have sort of general knowledge of the industry, but, but are the ones who will actually be the ones to take care of your application and people who have the legal knowledge of the whole process and are legally allowed to provide these services of representing you to governments. And so you just need to make sure the governments, all the governments have websites that list the local licensed companies. I think it's very important to reach out to those companies to make sure not to, not to be like really working with these marketing companies who then have to take. You're kind of paying double fees or it's not even double fees. You're just, you end up by hiring these marketing companies, you, you're creating a contractual relationship between you and the marketing company, but not you and the company that's, you know, you're providing the service. Right. And you lose security there, a certain amount of security. So I think that that's, this isn't.

One of those things you'd want to go to the, you know, this isn't something you're. You should do and try to look, look to save as much money as possible.

Feeds. Well, it's, it's a, you know, for anybody, you know, 100 grand is 100 grand. I mean, for anybody, you can have, you can be a billionaire, I don't care. But 100 grand is real money. And you're talking about your family and you're talking about your future. You're talking about a lot of things. And so, you know, you should approach this as you would approach any other legal procedure where you will, you would hire to assist you a licensed. If you want to find real estate, you wouldn't work with a real estate broker who's not licensed to be a real estate broker. So it's the same thing in this industry. If you know that the government has licensed you as a local service provider to do this work, then at least that much you can trust. And it's not just like a tweet or an Insta thing, an Instagram promotion. And I've just seen in a lot of different countries, especially where people don't really speak English that well, people have been taken advantage of and have paid crazy wiles expensive fees and then didn't get what they needed because they were speaking to this marketing company who has no effect on the process altogether. They're just sort of introduces. So I mean, they have a place to be. It's important that they were happy that they exist, but it's just you have to. It's such a niche industry, a financial service industry, that you really need to make sure you know who you're talking to.

I couldn't agree more. Well, I can definitely tell from talking to you that you do know what you're talking about. You've been doing this for a long time and you're a wealth of information on it. I know that if I ever make the decision to pursue a second citizenship, you are going to be on my speed dial.

Forward to speaking to you, absolutely.

And I hope that anybody else listening to this feels the exact same. So if you still are here and you want to find out More about this, ApexCapital Partners is Nuri's website and you can email him at nkats K a t z apexcap.org that'll be in the show notes. If anybody wants to just click on that, send an email. Nuri, I can't thank you enough for your time here today. This has been just a fantastic podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. And for everybody else, feel free to email me directly@askbradakenraptedbusiness.com and hit the subscribe button and give us a review if you haven't done that yet. I read every single one and it definitely helps the show get discovered so that other people can enjoy what you're enjoying. Until next time, I will see you on the next episizzle.