Exclusive: EU eyes legal action over Cyprus’s ‘golden passport’
Al JazeeraEU commissioner for justice calls for changes to citizenship-through-investment scheme after Al Jazeera investigation. European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders has told Al Jazeera he is looking into the possibility of legal action against Cyprus over the country’s citizenship-through-investment scheme. His comments come after Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit published The Cyprus Papers, a collection of leaked documents that showed Cyprus sold passports to criminals, fugitives and people considered to be at high risk of corruption. “We want to have clear information about the different people asking for nationality with a clear exchange of information with Europol and other kinds of institutions at the European level.” Cypriot response On Wednesday, the Cypriot government also responded to Al Jazeera’s revelations, calling the reporting “propaganda, not journalism”. The only way forward is for Cyprus to suspend the scheme, revoke the passports in question, and open investigations to establish accountabilities for the apparent abuse,” Laure Brillaud, Transparency’s senior policy officer, told Al Jazeera.
History of this topic
EU wants to end golden passport schemes, targets Russians
Associated Press
Cyprus and others must eliminate the passport black market
Al Jazeera
Cyprus cancels maligned ‘golden passport’ scheme
The Hindu
Cyprus: Anti-corruption protests after Al Jazeera passport expose
Al Jazeera
Cyprus abolishes citizenship through investment programme
Al Jazeera
Cyprus MP quits in wake of passports-for-sale scandal
Al Jazeera
Cyprus officials implicated in plan to sell passport to criminals
Al Jazeera
Exclusive: Cyprus sold passports to ‘politically exposed persons’
Al Jazeera
Explainer: What are The Cyprus Papers?
Al JazeeraDiscover Related
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