Latvia’s Financial Intelligence Service suspects around 200 foreign nationals placed over €10 million in fictitious investment schemes. Parliament is now weighing whether to shut the program down entirely.
Alleged Schemes and How They Operated
Latvia’s Financial Intelligence Service (FIS) has identified more than 20 locally registered companies suspected of facilitating fictitious investments under the country’s residence by investment (RBI) program, according to an investigation by Latvian Public Broadcaster LSM’s De Facto program published on April 27, 2026.
Around 200 foreign nationals are alleged to have put more than €10 million into the share capital of these companies. More than 50 have already received temporary residence permits (TRPs), and the total number of family members who have obtained permits or filed applications reportedly exceeds 100.
The FIS says that in the suspected cases, the money never actually served any genuine business purpose. Instead, funds were reportedly funnelled back to scheme organizers — through loans, fictitious transactions, property or vehicle purchases, or transfers that had no real economic rationale behind them. In some cases, investors were apparently told from the outset that they should not expect dividends and that recovering their capital was not part of the deal.
FIS head Toms Platacis described one pattern to De Facto that captured the mechanics of the alleged abuse well: the statutory €50,000 was not invested in any meaningful sense, but cycled through in increments — “ten thousand, paid five times in a circle,” as he put it.
The De Facto investigation looked at several companies individually. One, headquartered in Portugal and established around 18 months ago, brought in nine investors who applied for TRPs last year. Its shareholder register lists 30 individuals from India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Chile, Malawi, Syria, Vanuatu, and other countries — each holding a class of shares that, under the company’s own charter, carries no voting rights. Data from the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA) cited in the report suggest this company had one of the highest investor rejection rates in the entire program. A company representative spoke to De Facto about the firm’s operations in Portugal but did not follow up when questions were put to them in writing.
The investigation also identified a pattern of a single owner running several companies simultaneously, with each one attracting the maximum permitted number of investors. Two of those companies reported zero turnover and posted losses in 2024. The owner, in written comments to De Facto, put this down to one company being newly set up and the income in another being logged in a later period. A planned €10 million student hostel project had also fallen through after investors pulled out, he said, with attention now turning to a smaller residential development in Riga.
Five further companies linked to a single businesswoman also came under scrutiny, three of which have outstanding tax arrears. Investors brought in by those firms received TRPs in 2022, 2023, and 2024, but applications filed last year have either been turned down or are still being processed. A lawyer representing the companies told journalists that once a company meets all legal requirements and pays the required taxes, nothing more can be asked of it.
No formal finding of wrongdoing has been made against any of the companies examined. The investigations remain ongoing.
Background and Context
Latvia’s ‘Golden Visa’ program has been in operation since 2010, when amendments to immigration law allowed foreign nationals to obtain TRPs through property purchases, bank deposits, or share capital investments. The share capital route requires a minimum investment of €50,000 or €100,000 in a Latvian company that pays at least €40,000 annually in taxes.
The program had a strong start. In its first four years, it pulled in more than €1 billion — most of it from Russian nationals. That changed when tighter restrictions came in, and the money largely stopped flowing. Today, the share capital route makes up just 0.3% of total non-resident investment in the Latvian economy.
Even so, the numbers have been creeping back up. The OCMA received 109 applications last year, more than five times the 20 submitted in 2021, though only roughly one in three gets approved. In total, the program issued TRPs to 341 individuals — investors and family members combined — and drew in nearly €6 million in 2025.
De Facto report also found that seven of the 78 companies that attracted foreign investors over the past five years have since shut down or suspended activity, and around 20 have tax arrears. Roughly half of the companies reported fewer than five employees, and about half cleared the €40,000 annual tax threshold the program requires.
Pressure to act has been building for years. The State Treasury has long considered the program impractical and has pushed for a formal money laundering risk assessment for at least five years. Last week, the Saeima (Parliament) voted to close the government securities route, which had drawn just 88 investors and 132 family members across its entire decade of existence.
The security dimension is harder to ignore. Since 2012, the State Security Service has added more than 30 permit holders to its blacklist, and has been open about the fact that the vetting process cannot guarantee that an approved investor won’t eventually become a security concern. Deputy head Eriks Tsinkus, speaking before a parliamentary investigative commission, said that gathering reliable information on applicants from China, Central Asia, and Africa is genuinely difficult. He also raised a specific pattern that has caught the service’s attention: individuals who originally obtained TRPs as Russian nationals are now, in some cases, applying for renewals on Israeli passports — a trend that is being watched, but is hard to track when dual citizenship is actively concealed.
At the same commission, OCMA migration department head Ilze Briede acknowledged a gap in the current rules: a company that does nothing substantive but keeps up with its tax obligations is, legally, very difficult to remove from the program. “In our view, this criterion is currently insufficient,” she said.
Several MPs are now looking at legislation that would close the share capital route entirely, though there is no clear majority behind it yet. Jānis Dombrava, who heads the parliamentary investigative committee, was blunt about what the probe has revealed: not genuine investment in the national economy, but “a crude way to circumvent the system.” Ainars Latkovskis, chairman of the Saeima National Security Committee, noted the Economy Ministry and the Interior Ministry are pulling in opposite directions — and was candid about the prospects of resolving that before the current parliament runs its course. “Looking at how other issues are being handled right now, it will be difficult,” he said.
Māris Vainovskis, deputy chairman of the Foreign Investors’ Council of Latvia, framed the underlying tension in a single question at the commission: “Is our goal to issue a residence permit? Or is our goal to create an investment?”
That question has not been answered. The investigation is still running, and the political debate is far from settled. However Latvia’s parliament ultimately decides to respond — reform or closure — the outcome is likely to resonate well beyond Latvian borders, shaping how regulators across Europe think about the credibility and oversight of similar programs.
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Bayat Group is monitoring developments in Latvia and across the global investment migration landscape. We will continue to keep our clients and readers informed as this situation develops. For questions about compliant, regulated residency and citizenship pathways, contact us to schedule a free consultation.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information, including reporting by Latvian Public Broadcasting and related sources. The investigations described are ongoing, and no formal findings of wrongdoing have been made against the individuals or companies mentioned. The content is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. Readers should seek professional guidance before making any decisions related to residency or citizenship programs.