Refused by a Caribbean programme: how we found the reason and obtained a Vanuatu passport

A refusal with no reasons given

This is a composite example: the story is built from typical enquiries, no real client is described and the names are invented. Vitaly is 46, a Russian citizen living in Novorossiysk who owns a haulage company: trucks, a warehouse, transport across southern Russia. His wife Zhanna is 43 and runs the company’s accounts.

A year ago the couple applied for citizenship of a Caribbean country through an agent they found in an advert. They paid the due diligence fee, gathered the documents on the list and waited.

The agent worked entirely by email: he sent a list of documents, asked them to fill in the forms themselves and had no further questions. Vitaly assumed that was how it worked - if only a list is required, the rest must not matter.

Four months later the refusal arrived. The letter gave no reasons: commissions in such countries do not disclose them. The agent proposed applying to another country and paying for due diligence again.

The five thousand dollars paid for due diligence are not refunded: that fee goes to the due diligence firm regardless of the decision. Vitaly reckoned he had paid for four months of waiting and one line in a letter.

Vitaly declined and left the subject alone for six months. Then he decided to get to the bottom of it: his business involves cross-border haulage, and he did not want a second passport for decoration.

He left it alone for six months and came to us through a business partner who had obtained a passport with us a year earlier. The first thing he said at the meeting was: “I care more about understanding what went wrong than about paying and waiting again.”

The client did not come for a new country. He came for an answer to why he had been refused.

Daniel KovachSenior International Law Attorney

What we looked for and where we found it

A review starts from what due diligence can see about a person. That is not only the documents he sent but open sources, court databases, publications, sanctions and law-enforcement lists, and company records.

That takes anywhere from a few days to two weeks, and we run it before the engagement contract. The logic is simple: if something in the history would close the door, the client learns it in two weeks without losing a donation, rather than in four months with the fee gone.

We followed the same route as the due diligence firm. Two things came up. First, a commercial court dispute from five years ago between his company and a counterparty over a large sum. It had ended in a settlement, but the public database still showed a status from which the outcome was not clear.

Due diligence firms work from international databases and from the public registers of the applicant’s country. For Russia that means the commercial court case file, the companies register, the enforcement proceedings database and press coverage. All of it is open to anyone, which is why we run this review before filing rather than after.

Second, an inconsistency in the forms. In the first application the agent stated that the source of funds was company income, while the statements showed large receipts from the sale of a warehouse that the forms did not mention at all.

A third small thing surfaced in the spouse’s forms. From 2015 to 2018 Zhanna had been director of a small company that was later closed. The first application did not mention it, though the register still carries the entry. It means nothing in itself, but due diligence likes forms that match the register.

We separately checked what the client feared most: no criminal record, no sanctions listings, no namesakes with similar details in the databases. How due diligence works is set out in applicant due diligence.

How each question was closed

For the court dispute we obtained the ruling approving the settlement, the payment order showing it was paid, and a letter from the counterparty confirming it has no claims. All three were translated and certified.

We also asked the accounts department for the payment orders and a reconciliation with the counterparty as at the date the dispute closed. Once the documents were gathered into one block, it became clear the whole episode takes one page of explanation and four attachments.

For the warehouse we restored the whole chain: the 2016 purchase agreement, the 2023 sale agreement, the register extract showing the transfer of title, bank statements for both transactions and the tax return for the year of the sale.

Some of the warehouse papers had to be recovered: Vitaly no longer had the 2016 agreement because the bookkeeper had changed. The register issued a stamped copy in five working days, and that turned out to be the slowest document in the whole pack.

The source of funds was described in parts: haulage income over four years, dividends, the warehouse sale. Each part came with documents rather than an explanation in words.

Haulage income was evidenced year by year rather than in one long statement: company turnover, dividends, taxes paid, with a tax return attached for each year. That view reads faster than a three-hundred-page statement and raises fewer questions.

We also prepared a covering letter in English: who the applicant is, what he does, where the money comes from, what the dispute was about and how it ended. Due diligence reads that letter first.

The letter came to a page and a half. It contains no judgement words: only who, when, how much, how it ended and which attachments prove it. Due diligence uses such a letter as a table of contents for the whole pack.

Why an earlier refusal must be declared

That was Vitaly’s first question: could the earlier application go unmentioned. The answer is short: no. The form asks directly whether you have applied for citizenship or a visa elsewhere and whether you were refused.

Programmes share information, and the due diligence firms are often the same ones. A refusal that is not declared turns from a workable question into false information, and that is a serious matter.

So the application declared the refusal openly and attached an explanation: when it was filed, through which agent, what the application described incompletely, and which documents are attached now.

The wording of the letter was agreed with Vitaly twice. We removed every trace of feeling about the previous agent and left the facts: dates, country, who filed it, and what exactly that application described incompletely. Due diligence needs facts, not attitude.

How this sits in Vanuatu’s rules is set out in refusals and criminal records.

Filing in Vanuatu and one question from due diligence

For a couple the donation is USD 155,000 including the due diligence fee. The coconut oil fund costs 165,000 with 50,000 returned after five years, but it is paid at filing. Vitaly chose the donation: after his earlier experience he did not want to hand over a large sum before a decision.

Zhanna joined the application as the spouse; the couple have no children. For her we gathered a passport, the marriage certificate, a police certificate and a medical certificate - she did not go through due diligence.

Only the main applicant went through due diligence. One question came, and it was to the point: confirm that the settlement payment had been made in full. The answer was ready in advance and went out the same day.

While due diligence ran, Vitaly carried on working and was barely involved: three short calls and one document request in a month. Zhanna was sceptical, because last time silence had ended in a refusal. The lawyer sent her the status every Friday, even when nothing had changed.

Approval came a month later. The couple gave biometrics in Moscow and took the oath online, by video. The passports arrived two weeks after that.

They went to Moscow for a single day: biometrics in the morning, a meeting with the lawyer at midday, the train home in the evening. The oath they took at home, by video, the two of them from one laptop.

How it ended for the family

In this scenario the Vanuatu Commission approved the application and the passports were issued. In a real application the decision and the timing rest with the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission.

Both kept their Russian citizenship: Russia allows a second one. They notified the Interior Ministry about Vanuatu within 60 days.

Vitaly also finished the job on the public court record: he filed for the settlement’s performance to be noted. That matters for future bank checks as well.

Six months later he came back with a new task: opening an account for settlements with Turkish hauliers. The pack assembled for the programme served there too - the bank asked for almost the same things, and nothing had to be gathered twice.

He sums up his lesson briefly: the refusal was not for the dispute with a counterparty but for the fact that nobody explained anything about it.

A Vanuatu passport is issued for 10 years and then replaced, while the citizenship itself is indefinite.

Due diligence is not looking for perfect people. It is looking for answers to its questions, and those answers have to be documents.

Daniel KovachSenior International Law Attorney

What the passport changed in Vitaly’s work

The first change is practical: trips to hauliers in Turkey and the Emirates no longer start at a visa centre. Each trip used to take a week of preparation; now the ticket is bought the day before.

The second is negotiations. Partners in the Emirates had several times proposed meeting “next week”, which used to mean a refusal or a postponement. In the first quarter after the passports Vitaly flew to two such meetings.

The third is a backup document while a Russian passport is being replaced. Replacement takes time, and a haulage business does not wait.

The lawyer warned separately: a Vanuatu passport changes neither taxes nor reporting in Russia. Tax residence depends on where a person spends more time, not on how many passports they hold.

And one more thing people forget in stories like this: a second passport does not override banking rules. Vitaly opens accounts as a citizen of two countries and declares both citizenships.

A passport gives freedom of travel and a backup document. It cancels neither taxes nor banking rules, and we say so before the contract is signed.

Daniel KovachSenior International Law Attorney

Who this route suits

Anyone already refused by another programme: the reason can usually be worked out from open sources and closed with documents.

Anyone with concluded court disputes, bankruptcies or closed investigations: what matters is not an empty history but a clear documented outcome.

Anyone whose first application described the source of funds in one line: in Vanuatu it is built up in parts, and every part is evidenced.

Similar stories: pre-check before the contract and proving where the money came from. Programme terms are on the Vanuatu citizenship page.

Composite example: the story is built from typical enquiries and no real clients are described. Figures as of September 2026. The decision rests with the Vanuatu Citizenship Commission.