Its an intersting article, please go through it. It came in Times of India.

Got Rs 45 lakh? Buy Canadian citizenship
Prabhakar Sinha
[2 May, 2007 l 0039 hrs ISTlTIMES NEWS NETWORK]
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NEW DELHI: Those who have reportedly been paying sums like Rs 30 lakh to become kabootars (illegal migrants) may have missed a trick. For as little as Rs 45 lakh, an entire family can become Canadian citizens completely legally. In fact, for a somewhat larger amount, a family could get become citizens of the US, UK, Australian or New Zealand too.

The majority of Indians hankering to settle abroad may not know this, but many Indian businessmen have been utilising schemes floated by these countries to gain citizenship in return for investing a few hundred thousand dollars there. What’s more, some foreign banks are even willing to part-finance your investment.

Governments in the US, Canada, UK, New Zealand and Australia, among others, are offering citizenship to anybody (and his/her family) who is willing to invest a certain minimum sum in their country. The sums vary in each case, as do the strings attached.

In the UK, citizenship comes with an investment of £750,000 (about $1.5 million or a little over Rs 6 crore). In the US, $500,000 (Rs 2 crore) will get you and your family citizenship, for New Zealand a million New Zealand dollars (Rs 3 crore).

In Australia, there is no minimum investment stipulated. However, a commitment to start a business within four years will do the trick.

In the case of Canada, the stipulated minimum investment that gets you automatic citizenship is 400,000 Canadian dollars or about Rs 1.4 crore. However, a major Canadian bank, Desjardins — with assets of $130 billion and ranked 92nd internationally — has come up with its own scheme under which it will finance around 70% of the amount if the investor makes a down payment of 30%. That means just Rs 45 lakh will do to get you Canadian citizenship.

Citizenship-for-investment schemes have been around for a couple of years in most cases, but Indians were unable to take advantage of them as they were not allowed to invest more than $25,000 per year abroad till December last year. With the RBI increasing the limit from $25,000 to $50,000 and then to $100,000 last month, ‘buying’ foreign citizenship has become possible. A family of five, for instance, could take out $500,000 in one go without violating RBI guidelines.

Desjardins’ offer is a recognition of this fact. Explaining the scheme, Marc Audet, vice president of Desjardins, told TOI that the bank offers a scheme under which one needs to deposit only C$120,000 with the bank. The bank will finance the remaining C$280,000 to file the application for permanent residency (which entitles you to citizenship after two years) in Canada.

The C$400,000 are invested in interest-free Canadian government bonds. After five years, when the government returns the money, the bank will keep all of it.

In effect, the C$120,000 you pay upfront becomes the interest earned by the bank on the C$280,000 that it lends you to file the application.

Already posted at http://www.canadiandesi.ca/read.php?TID=17265

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