📰 🗞 Antoine Izambard, Louis Raymond
25/02/2025.
Vanuatu files 1/3. Intelligence Online has obtained the official list of foreign nationals who have acquired a passport from the South Pacific state in recent years. The document allows visa-free travel to 130 countries and is favoured by intelligence and business figures alike.
The long list of 1,961 names includes a Central Asian spymaster, sanctioned Russian oligarchs, Ukrainian businessmen, Asian billionaires and diplomats. Intelligence Online has obtained the official records of which foreign nationals acquired Republic of Vanuatu passports in 2022 and 2023.
The South Pacific archipelago of 80 islands has specialised in selling these golden passports, which finance more than a third of the state budget every year. The precious document costs $130,000 and is issued in record time - around a month - and allows visa-free travel to 130 countries. For a long time, recipients could also choose an alias, a blessing for wanted criminals or intelligence officers wishing to operate secretly.
Faced with criticism from several countries that the system was opaque and lax, Vanuatu in 2022 passed a law banning such name changes. Several diplomatic sources have however expressed scepticism that the law is actually being applied. Abuse of the system, known as citizenship-by-investment (CBI), prompted the EU to suspend its visa exemption for Vanuatu passport holders in December 2022. Two years later, the EU revoked its travel agreement with the archipelago entirely, in an unprecedented move. Despite repeated warnings in recent years, Vanuatu continues to show little regard for the pedigree of foreigners to whom it grants citizenship, as Intelligence Online has discovered.
Billionaire's sonVanuatru granted 2,200 passports to foreigners in 2020, a number it slashed to 1,054 in 2022 and 907 in 2023. Chinese names account for more than 30% of the passports, followed by Russians, and together they account for more than half the passports. Slapped with international sanctions in the wake of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia saw a growing number of its citizens - around 250 - granted a Vanuatu passport in 2023.
Uzbek spymasterThe names of Ukrainians Roman Felyk and Vadym Mashurov, who made their fortune in cryptocurrencies, also feature on the passport lists. Mashurov is wanted in Kazakhstan.
Several prominent Central Asians also hold these golden passports, including Rustam Inoyatov, who commanded Uzbekistan's SNB secret service from 1995 to 2018 (IO, 03/03/23). The former spymaster and several of his family members obtained a Vanuatu passport in 2023. They include his son Sharif Inoyatov, who runs an agri-food and property empire in Uzbekistan and Russia.
Several nationals from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan also hold the precious travel document. Likewise in Pakistan, where local media reported in 2023 that Farhat Shahzadi, a close associate of Bushra Bibi, the wife of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, held a Vanuatu passport.
Passport traffickingAt the urging of the European Commission, Vanuatu In February 2023 launched a commission of inquiry into its citizenship by investment programmes and their erratic management. However, according to several sources, the inquiry has now ground to a halt. Ishmael Kalsakau, Vanuatu's prime minister from November 2022 to September 2023, said he was open to trying to make the scheme more transparent. However, his mandate was short-lived and he has since had three successors. Vanuatu is also facing the problem of trafficking in diplomatic passports, which has hit the headlines in the local press in recent weeks, prompting the Vanuatu government to act.
When contacted, the Vanuatu government and its Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) responsible for financial intelligence and checking the profiles of passport applicants declined to answer our questions.
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https://www.intelligenceonline.com/government-intelligence/2025/02/25/from-spies-to-oligarchs-vanuatu-s-golden-passports-a-must-have,110379198-evg
