By Kripa Upadhyay

A new passport, an old problem

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many wealthy Russians have encountered difficulties due to economic sanctions, even if they’re not officially sanctioned. To navigate this, many have sought Turkish citizenship through a $400,000 real estate investment.

This process offers a Turkish passport, allowing easier travel and access to U.S. visa options unavailable to Russian nationals, like the E-2 and EB-5 programs. However, investors soon realize this route is more complex than expected.

This article discusses why the citizenship-by-investment strategy, popular among nationals from sanctioned countries like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, often falls short in U.S. visa processes. It highlights how agencies like OFAC, FinCEN, and USCIS conduct thorough reviews based on economic nationality, source of wealth, and previous sanctions, rather than just the passport presented. Additionally, it outlines the responsibilities of practitioners advising these clients and the risks of not adhering to compliance standards.

What citizenship-by-investment buys — and what it doesn’t

Citizenship-by-in vestment programs are not inherently problematic. They serve legitimate purposes: individuals with genuinely international lives, multi-generational families spanning multiple jurisdictions, or business interests that require travel flexibility have long used second-citizenship programs as a rational planning tool. The programs themselves are lawful; the issuing states are sovereign.

But the scale and composition of demand shifted markedly after February 24, 2022. Turkish CBI applications from Russian nationals surged. Programs in Malta, the Caribbean, and the Pacific islands reported similar spikes. The Financial Action Task Force — the intergovernmental body that sets global AML and sanctions evasion standards — responded with explicit guidance identifying CBI schemes as a primary vector for sanctions circumvention by politically exposed persons and oligarch-adjacent wealth.

The U.S. State Department has formally flagged passports from several CBI programs as presenting elevated fraud and security risks in consular visa processing. OFAC’s internal guidance, reflected in enforcement patterns, increasingly treats CBI acquisition in high-risk contexts as a red flag for intent to evade sanctions— not as a mitigating factor.

The programs most frequently encountered in U.S. visa and investment contexts, and the level of scrutiny each now attracts, are in the table below:

Country	Min. Investment	Processing	U.S. Scrutiny	Key Risk Factor
Turkey	$400K real estate	3–6 months	Very High	Primary post-2022 route for Russian nationals; limited vetting of source of investment funds
Malta	€600K–€750K	12–14 months	Elevated	EU passport via CBI; scrutinized as lighter-touch than standard EU naturalization
St. Kitts / Dominica	$150K–$200K	2–4 months	High	DOS has formally flagged Caribbean CBI passports in consular visa guidance
Vanuatu	$130K donation	30–60 days	Very High	Fastest program globally; cited repeatedly in FATF reports on sanctions evasion

CBI passport is a travel document issued by a sovereign state. It confers certain rights under the law of that state and under international treaty arrangements. It does not alter a person’s designation status under U.S. law. It does not change the origin of their wealth. It does not reset the biometric, financial, and intelligence records that U.S. agencies hold on the individual. And — critically for visa purposes — it does not satisfy the disclosure obligations imposed by U.S. visa applications.

The anatomy of the problem — how it unravels

To identify failures in CBI strategy, we should examine specific events.

The fund trail

Continuing with the Russian investors’ example, their wealth, though lawfully acquired under Russian law, passed through various banking institutions. It was converted from rubles to euros or dollars, routed through offshore structures, then converted to Turkish lira for a CBI real estate purchase, before being converted back to dollars for a U.S. investment. Each step creates a record. A USCIS source-of-funds review for an EB-5 petition may require bank statements from the past 5 years, documentation of wire transfers, records of intermediary entities, and details of currency conversions. The trail begins at the source, not at the Turkish bank account.

OFAC sanctions target individuals, not their citizenship. A Russian national on the U.S. SDN list remains sanctioned regardless of new citizenship. Additionally, Russian nationals with wealth from sectors like energy or defense might face sanctions, even if they aren’t listed. Turkish naturalization doesn’t change this.

The disclosure obligation

When applying for U.S. visas, applicants must disclose all nationalities and citizenships. For instance, a Russian national who acquires Turkish citizenship and fails to disclose their Russian background risks a permanent ban from the U.S. This mistake is a significant concern in immigration-based citizenship-by-investment (CBI) strategies.

The biometric record

USCIS, DOS, and DHS maintain non-nationality-specific biometric databases. A U.S. visa application, even as a Russian national, creates a fingerprint record. The Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) conducts checks that cross-reference these records from past applications, regardless of the current nationality. A Turkish passport does not change the fingerprints.

How each visa pathway exposes the problem differently

The same situation varies based on the U.S. visa category an investor chooses. Each option has different evidence requirements, leading to potential challenges.

The E-2 treaty investor — the false comfort of treaty eligibility

Turkey is a treaty country for E-2 purposes; Russia is not. A Russian-born Turkish citizen is therefore technically eligible for E-2 consideration in a way that a Russian national presenting a Russian passport is not. This is the feature of the CBI strategy that migration advisors market most aggressively.

What those advisors frequently omit is the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual guidance directing consular officers to look beyond presented citizenship when prior national origin raises sanctions or security concerns. E-2 adjudication at the consular level involves a source-of-funds review for the “substantial capital” requirement. When the capital trail leads to Russian banking institutions, the treaty-country nationality becomes far less dispositive than advertised.

For counsel advising E-2 applications, eligibility is a threshold question, not a complete answer. USCIS and consular officers are trained to conduct independent source-of-funds analysis regardless of the nationality presented. ‘They qualify on paper’ is the beginning of the analysis, not its conclusion.

The EB-5 immigrant investor — the most demanding standard

EB-5 imposes the most rigorous source-of-funds documentation requirement of any U.S. visa category. The I-526E petition (for regional center investments) requires the petitioner to demonstrate that the investment capital was obtained through lawful means — and USCIS traces that demonstration across every step of the fund’s journey from its origin to the U.S. project account.

A rouble-to-lira-to-dollar conversion chain that passes through Russian banking institutions in years when sectoral sanctions applied to those institutions will be scrutinized with particular intensity. USCIS adjudicators have access to Treasury OFAC data a...

- EB5Investors.com

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