SOURCE: CMC & Ja­maica Glean­er

The Gov­ern­ment of Grena­da has tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed—with im­me­di­ate ef­fect—the ac­cep­tance of new ap­pli­ca­tions from cit­i­zens from Rus­sia and Be­larus for its Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment Pro­gramme.

A re­port in the Ja­maica Glean­er says the an­nounce­ment was made on Thurs­day March 10, in an of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by Grena­da’s Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment Pro­gramme Unit.

The move comes amid Rus­sia's con­tin­ued in­va­sion of Ukraine.

“The Gov­ern­ment is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine and will ad­vise of any fur­ther changes to its cur­rent pol­i­cy on this mat­ter,” the state­ment read.

“We thank you for un­der­stand­ing in this mat­ter as we strive to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty and rep­u­ta­tion of the Grena­da CBI Pro­gramme,” the Cit­i­zen­ship by In­vest­ment Pro­gramme Unit added.

Ac­cord­ing to the Ja­maica Glean­er re­port, Grena­da's CBI pro­gramme al­lows in­di­vid­u­als and their fam­i­lies to ob­tain cit­i­zen­ship or per­ma­nent res­i­dence in ex­change for mak­ing a pay­ment in­to the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Fund or to­wards an ap­proved re­al es­tate project in the is­land.

Oth­er CARI­COM coun­tries have sim­i­lar CBI pro­grammes and al­so have tak­en ac­tion in re­sponse to the cur­rent cri­sis with Rus­sia and Ukraine.

“The Do­mini­ca and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ments, which al­so have sim­i­lar CBI pro­grammes, pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pend­ed ap­pli­ca­tions from na­tion­als of Rus­sia and its al­ly Be­larus,” the Ja­maica Glean­er ar­ti­cle not­ed.

“An­tigua al­so in­clud­ed Ukraini­ans on its list of na­tion­als for whom its CBI pro­gramme would be put on hold,” it added.

Grena­da, Do­mini­ca and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da were among 141 UN mem­ber states that vot­ed last week to con­demn Rus­sia.