The PAN party has asked the Government to suspend the analysis of requests for golden visas by Belarusian citizens, similarly to what has already happened with the Russians, and wants the disclosure of the beneficiaries of these two countries.

The party addressed two requests to the Government, namely to the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, and to the Minister of Internal Administration, Francisca Van Dunem. In the initiative, People-Animals-Nature refers to the decision announced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the end of February that Portugal suspended the granting of golden visas to Russian citizens, as part of the sanctions applied by the European Union to Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.

However, the PAN deputies ask that the Portuguese State go “further and that such precautionary suspensions and the suspensions already announced by the Government also cover Belarusian citizens”.

“Without these precautionary suspensions, our country could be used as an escape valve for European sanctions against Russian and Belarusian oligarchs, which will always mean collaboration, even if indirect, with the Putin regime and its allies”, they warn.

The PAN also defends the suspension of the “processing and analysis of processes referring to requests for family reunification, permanent residence and nationality by naturalization of Russian citizens holding golden visas”.

The party justifies that “the risks of corruption, tax evasion and money laundering associated with it do not outweigh the possible benefits”.

“While the general framework of problems associated with the 'gold' visa program was already well defined, following Putin's Russian invasion of Ukraine there was a problem of a moral nature associated with this mechanism, which is related to the fact that the same for Russian citizens, belonging to the oligarchy that supports Putin, his regime and its actions that undermine the most basic democratic values, can have shelter in our country and thus have unrestricted access to the Schengen zone, have travel facilities to more than 100 countries and circumvent the international sanctions imposed on them at different levels (namely, the financial system) by different countries”.