The below article first appeared in IMI on April 1st, 2026, and was an April Fool’s Day spoof. We’ll be back next April with another satirical article.
Basseterre, April 1 – In a surprise joint announcement, five Caribbean nations unveil a framework for citizens to sell their nationality.
Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia have jointly announced the launch of a Citizenship Transfer Protocol (CTP), a framework that will allow natural-born citizens to sell their citizenship to approved foreign buyers in direct, peer-to-peer transactions.
Under the framework, citizenship will be treated as a transferable asset rather than a fixed legal status. Governments will collect a VAT on each completed transfer, with rates varying by jurisdiction.
Under the CTP, natural born citizens of any participating country will be permitted to list their citizenship for sale at a price of their choosing, with transactions expected to range between $50,000 and $500,000 depending, a spokesperson said, on “the persuasiveness of the seller.”
Buyers must pass standard CBI due diligence. Sellers must demonstrate “sufficient desperation” to qualify, a threshold the joint communiqué did not define further.
New bureaucracy, familiar acronyms
Each country will establish a dedicated CTP Citizenship Transfer Unit (CTP CTU) to administer transfers, separate from its existing Citizenship by Investment (CBI) apparatus. Within each CTP CTU, a Due Diligence Unit (the CTP CTU DDU) will vet both parties to the transaction.
Natural born citizens who sell their nationality to a foreign buyer without having first secured alternative citizenship would be rendered stateless as a consequence. The government’s working group, however, appears to have taken this into consideration: A spokesperson for the joint secretariat confirmed that sellers who later regret the decision may reapply for citizenship through the standard CBI channel, at full price.
“The beauty of the system is its circularity,” the spokesperson told IMI. “A citizen sells his nationality, receives a lump sum, spends a few years stateless, and then uses whatever remains of the proceeds to buy it back. The government collects revenue at both ends.”
“Register of Approved Sellers”
Not just anyone can sell. Citizens wishing to list their nationality must first apply for inclusion on a Register of Approved Sellers, maintained by the CTP CTU. The application carries a non-refundable processing fee of $1,500, which the joint secretariat described as “a modest administrative charge that also serves to confirm the seriousness of the applicant’s desperation.”
Approved sellers will be assigned a unique Seller Identification Number (SIN) and listed on a publicly searchable database. Removal from the register, whether voluntary or involuntary, will require a separate application and a further fee.
The CTP CTU DDU has already rejected “several sellers,” according to our source, having deemed them “too financially comfortable.”
In addition to peer-to-peer transactions, the protocol introduces a Wholesale Transfer Framework (WTF), allowing approved intermediaries to acquire citizenship allocations in bulk for subsequent resale.
Under the WTF, licensed wholesalers will be permitted to acquire multiple citizenship positions from approved sellers and package them for distribution to end-buyers across key markets.
“Perceived paradox”
Sellers who lack the commercial acumen to negotiate directly with buyers may engage licensed marketing agents to solicit offers on their behalf. Agent commissions are capped at 10% of the final sale price.
To “preserve the dignity of citizenship,” the CTP imposes a minimum sale price of $50,000 per transaction. Sellers caught undercutting this floor on secondary platforms will face penalties ranging from fines to, in a provision that has drawn particular attention, revocation of their citizenship.
Legal observers have noted the circularity of revoking the citizenship of someone attempting to sell it. The joint secretariat declined to address this directly, stating only that “the regulatory framework is internally consistent and any perceived paradox reflects a failure of interpretation on the part of the observer.”
Children excluded, dependents bundled
Children under 18 cannot have their citizenship sold on their behalf.
Sellers may, however, bundle the passports of eligible dependents into a single transaction: Spouses, unmarried dependent siblings under 30 years of age, dependent parents, and dependent grandparents all qualify for inclusion for “family bucket sales.”
Revocation and “foreclosure citizenships”
Should a buyer be convicted of a “serious crime” following naturalization, the acquired citizenship will be revoked. It will not, however, be returned to the original seller.
Instead, the revoked citizenship will enter a government citizenship pool and be resold at public auction to the highest qualifying bidder.
In the case of Grenada, the CBI unit will market these as “foreclosure citizenships” at a reduced price point.
Quota caps
Each country will impose annual transfer caps to prevent what one official described as “total population depletion.”
Dominica’s cap is reportedly set at 2,000 transfers per year, which the government noted is “well within sustainable statelessness levels.” Saint Lucia has not disclosed its cap, citing national security.
Statelessness as fiscal liberation
Participating governments plan to market the CTP to their own populations with campaigns emphasizing the tax advantages of holding no nationality at all. A draft brochure for the Antiguan campaign, shared with IMI, reads: “You used to pay taxes in Antigua. Now you pay taxes nowhere.”
The European Commission issued a statement describing itself as “deeply unsettled” by the CTP framework but acknowledged it could not identify a specific EU regulation the protocol violates. A senior Commission official, speaking on background, admitted that “the legal team has been staring at this for a week and nobody can find the right directive to cite.”
“Sovereignty-chain technology”
Law firms across the investment migration market have already published competing memoranda arguing that the CTP is “technically not illegal under any existing framework, because no one ever imagined this would happen.” At least one firm’s opinion runs to 14 pages. None have reached a definitive conclusion.
The IMF, meanwhile, has circulated an internal working paper titled “Voluntary Statelessness and GDP Per Capita: A Caribbean Experiment.” The abstract concludes that “further research is needed,” which is economist shorthand for a sentiment the authors could not express in academic language.
An unnamed blockchain startup has announced plans to launch “CitSwap,” a decentralized citizenship exchange built on what its whitepaper describes as “sovereignty-chain technology.”
Separately: St Kitts seeks US assistance
In a related development, the government of Saint Kitts and Nevis has applied for US foreign aid to address what it described as an “anticipated surge of stateless persons on its shores.” The State Department has not yet responded.
Happy April Fools’ Day from the IMI team.
