From Reuters today, Australia is to ease the visa restrictions on wealthy folks (Chinese) that wish to buy Australian citizenship in the hope of raising $6 billion per annum:
…”High net-worth individuals in China are very private in relation to their wealth,” Rita Chowdhury, a member of the Law Council of Australia’s migration law committee told parliament.
“They definitely have a lot of concerns about providing information about their financial circumstances to a government body. They also have suspicions that the Australian government could be passing that information to the Chinese government.”
…By the end of June, just 286 visas had been approved compared with 1,497 “expressions of interest”, according to data from the Immigration Department.
Australia has said it wants to speed up approvals and lawyers and agents expect it to clarify rules on source of funding by specifying timeframe and evidence to prove the money is clean…The new rules will likely be announced by November.
…Lawyers and agents said it was clear some applicants were trying to use the scheme to hide ill-gotten money, but the practice was not widespread and faced significant hurdles.
Until now.
