‘Golden visas’ open door to foreign criminals, says corruption-buster Bill Browder
The Opposition Leader’s plan to bring back $5m ‘golden ticket’ visa has been slammed by Magnitsky Act founder Bill Browder.
Peter Dutton’s pledge to bring back $5m “golden ticket” visas for wealthy foreign investors has been condemned by Magnitsky Act founder and corruption fighter Sir Bill Browder for “reopening the door to organised crime”.
“The types of people who have taken advantage of this in the past are often the ones you least want to have coming to your country,” Sir Bill told The Australian.
“Australia is not such a poor country that it needs to prostitute itself to Chinese and Russian criminals.”
The Opposition Leader revealed his plan at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney when a migration agent asked him to revive the Significant Investor Visa, which was banned last year by the Albanese government after revelations by The Australian that foreign criminals and corrupt regime officials were using it to acquire Australian citizenship.
The red-carpet scheme largely targeted Chinese nationals, and was given the visa subclass number 888, which signifies triple good luck in Chinese numerology.
More than 7000 high net worth Chinese citizens and family members were granted visas in return for a $5m investment, which conferred an automatic right of permanent residence but did not require applicants to speak or learn English.
Mr Dutton was caught on camera in conversation with AOYE Group immigration firm managing director Sandra Li, who told him that “everyone was asking” when the visa would be restored.
‘I think we’ll bring it back,’ Mr Dutton told her. “Whether we do it before the election, or look at a different design for it – we’ll have to consider all that.”
“We all want you to win,” Ms Li replies.
Ms Li posted a video of the exchange on Chinese social media platform RedNote. She did not respond to requests for comment from The Australian.
The $10,000-a-head event was a fundraiser for Scott Yung, the Liberal candidate for the marginal seat of Bennelong, in which 17 per cent of voters were born in either China or Hong Kong.
Some of the key marginal seats in the upcoming federal election have high numbers of voters with Chinese ancestry, including Banks (16 per cent), Reid (18 per cent) and Chisholm (19 per cent).
US-born British hedge fund manager Bill Browder, who drove the creation of Magnitsky laws in Australia and around the world to sanction human rights abusers and corrupt officials, said he did not believe voters would be receptive to Mr Dutton’s plan.
“It’s hard to imagine that it’s good politics to be standing in front of the Australian people and saying, ‘we want to have potentially dodgy criminals buying their way into Australian residency and Australian passports’,” he said.
“It seems like the kind of thing that someone might be doing just for a narrow group of political contributions.
“The Albanese government should hold firm on good policies that are in place for good reasons.”
Sir Bill, who was knighted last year “for services to human rights, anti-corruption and international affairs” said the reversal would completely undermine Australia’s Magnitsky legislation.
“The Magnitsky Act is designed to prevent kleptocrats and human rights violators from coming into the country, and now you have somebody who wants to propose a fast track for potential kleptocrats to come into the country – it makes no sense,” he said.
Most Western countries had abandoned ‘passport-for-sale’ visas to stop corrupt foreign officials parking their wealth in “safe” countries, he said.
“As the rest of the world closes down these loopholes, Australia is going to get more of these people because they’re not welcome elsewhere.”
Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo, who had been granted permanent residency, had his visa cancelled over concerns about his links to the Chinese Communist Party.
The prolific political donor was alleged to have personally delivered $100,000 cash in an Aldi plastic bag to Labor Party officials, a claim he denied.
One of the biggest players in the Significant Investor Visa industry was Michael Menghong Gu, whose property empire iProsperity at one point controlled about $1.8bn of real estate in Australia before it collapsed.
Mr Gu raised more than $100m from unlucky Chinese investors in the visa scheme before fleeing the country.
The Grattan Institute said killing off business investment visas and replacing them with more skilled worker visas would boost Australia’s dividend from migrants by $3bn over the next decade, because business investment visa-holders retired about 20 years earlier than the younger skilled workers who would replace them.
Hung house fear fuels campaign warchests
Voters in key election seats will be targeted in one of Australia’s biggest third-party campaigns, with industry groups, activists, unions and individuals finalising multimillion-dollar warchests.
Big business, Dutton on same page
Business chiefs will campaign for measures already endorsed by Peter Dutton and heap pressure on Anthony Albanese over spending, deregulation and tax.