Saint Kitts CIP Becomes Fourth in Caribbean to Allow for Sibling Dependents

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In a circular issued yesterday, the Saint Kitts & Nevis Citizenship by Investment Unit informs stakeholders that, effective immediately, main applicants will be permitted to include siblings in their citizenship by investment applications, as long as they meet the following criteria:

• They must be the sibling of the main applicant (i.e., not of the spouse or any other family member included in the application);
• They must be 30 years of age or younger;
• They must be childless
• They must be financially dependent on the main applicant

The policy, emphasizes the circular, will not have retroactive effects; siblings may only be included in files submitted from this day forward and may not be appended to already-approved files.

The additional fees required to include a sibling is set at US$40,000 under the real estate option and US$20,000 under the Sustainable Growth Fund contribution option.

Siblings hoping to qualify, moreover, will have to undergo the same background checks as main applicants and will be subject to the applicable due diligence fee scale. The CIU will accept sworn affidavits from the main applicant confirming the sibling’s financial dependence on them as evidence of the same.

The Saint Kitts & Nevis CIP thus becomes the fourth Caribbean CIP to accommodate sibling-inclusion in applications, following the introduction of such policies in Grenada in 2018, and in Dominica and Saint Lucia last year.

The Kittitian policy, however, differs from that of the other programs in certain key respects; While the maximum age of siblings in Saint Kitts is set at 30, it is 25 in Dominica and 18 in Saint Lucia. Grenada appears not to have any such age restrictions. Grenada and Saint Lucia further have no requirement for financial dependence on the main applicant.

Antigua & Barbuda is now the last Caribbean CIP to not expressly allow for the inclusion of siblings, except in such cases where the person is “by reason of age or infirmity of body or mind wholly dependent on that person for his or her subsistence or maintenance”.