Foreign investors will not be able to obtain Russian citizenship under a simplified scheme, even if they invest their entire fortune in Russia. State Duma deputies decided not to be guided by foreign experience and rejected the corresponding draft law. As Gazeta.Ru reports, with the required 226 votes, only three people voted for the adoption of the corresponding draft law.
The proposal to simplify the acquisition of Russian citizenship for foreign investors was made earlier by members of the SPS faction Boris Nemtsov, Irina Khakamada and Boris Nadezhdin and deputies of United Russia (though later all the latter removed their authorship from the document). As Irina Khakamada explained, the bill was general in nature and established only the possibility of such a method of obtaining citizenship. The amount of investment was to be determined by the Russian government. Moreover, the law "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation" already contains an article (Article 6, paragraph 3) defining a similar mechanism for obtaining temporary residence permits in Russia. And it would be logical to expand the legislative base on this issue by granting large investors the right to realize their money in full on the territory of Russia.
"We didn't calculate the amounts then; our main task was to adopt a position and then discuss the price of the issue with the government," Irina Khakamada stated. "We focused on everyone: there are quite wealthy people in the CIS countries as well. The idea was simple: first, to legalize capital; second, to give the opportunity for quick registration to those who have long worked in Russia, invested in our country's economy, and want to obtain citizenship. As for the size of investments, we need to look at what projects we have and what amounts we need. But that's no longer a political question."
The Duma Council, which considered the bill on February 3, 2004, sent it to the regions and received neutral assessments. But the Duma committee on constitutional legislation and state construction gave a negative conclusion. As the deputy chairman of the committee, Nikolai Moskalets, explained while presenting the document to deputies, "investments as payment for citizenship do not look very good."
Representatives of both the CPRF and Rodina agreed with his statement. For example, CPRF faction member Nikolai Kondratenko said that "only villains with evil intent could introduce this bill." He added that no Western investor would invest in industries in whose development Russia is really interested. Vice-speaker from the Rodina faction Sergei Baburin also considers the bill anti-people and anti-state. And that instead of investment in Russia, "we will open the doors to the legalization of illegal migration, which comes primarily from China and Arab countries." As a result, deputies rejected the bill. However, a law similar to the rejected one, as Irina Khakamada said, already exists.
The document "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation" dated July 25, 2002, gives a foreign citizen who has made investments in Russia the opportunity to obtain a temporary residence permit (beyond the quota annually established by the Russian government). The minimum amount of investment is not specified in the law, but it is stated that it must be "determined by the Government of the Russian Federation."
Gazeta.Ru tried to find out how much getting the right to temporary residence in Russia beyond the established quotas might cost. It turned out that in two years the government was unable to determine the amount of investment it would consider sufficient for such a permit. And in the information department of the Russian government, they had not even heard of putting such a resolution on the agenda.
Meanwhile, many countries around the world have schemes for obtaining both preferential residence rights and citizenship. In this case, one can rely on the experience of any part of the world. For example, a person who simply buys real estate worth $65,000 can become a citizen of Spain. A residence permit in the UK costs 800,000 pounds and requires going through many bureaucratic procedures, while US citizenship costs $1 million and a little patience.