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How a 30-Year Old Swiss Built World’s Cheapest CIP · IMI Podcasts

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Sao Tome and Princip Citizenship by Investment Program was actually a little bit of luck involved, let's say.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I had a neighbor who was doing investments in Sao Tomei for quite a long time.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then we met and we had a seat together and they realized what we do as Passport Legacy, which is mainly citizenship and residence by investment.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they thought that this would be the perfect island to establish something like that because they're in need of financial help and they can profit from developments on the ground.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I would say it started and came together, where we had our first trip and the government was extremely positive about implementing such a program.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And step by step, over the last 18 months that we worked with the government very closely, we helped them establish the citizenship by investment program.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And since the first of September, then it was live.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: The main thing we focused on was definitely first to have a proper citizenship act implemented.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was number one.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had to go through their entire regulations because we realized that a lot of countries, or especially the clients, they want the following.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: They want quick, they want citizenship by descent, and they want a price point that they can afford at the end of the day.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that were the main topics that we went in when we started creating that specific program.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Since the 1st of September, we started officially accepting applications through the Citizenship by Investment Unit in Dubai.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And next Monday, the first passport will be issued after already several approval letters were issued, in fact.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Citizenship by Investment Program of Saltumi and Principie has currently about 20 approved agents.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's still a few more in due diligence, and requirements are mainly that you need to be in the industry for already two years, that you need to have another license already, because we do not want to come in and just focus on all the new agencies and rather go really with the people that have a lot of experience in the industry that can then officially go and promote the program.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: We predict that the program in the first year will receive around 500 applications, and I think we're on a very good path to achieve that.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then next year, hopefully, we'll double that number.