Latvia’s Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava has ordered a review of Ņina Linde’s possible role in obtaining Latvian residence permits for third-country nationals. He put their number at several dozen. The Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA) and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) will conduct the review.
The case centers on a €50,000 (approximately US$56,000) investment offer, according to Latvian Television (LTV). The sum matches the minimum investment under the share capital route of Latvia’s golden visa. That route has been the only investment pathway in operation since the new Immigration Law took effect on September 15.
OCMA has confirmed that the company behind the offer sponsored third-country nationals, and it says it will repeat its checks in those cases.
Linde directs the Institute of Economics LLC, a private company that the president of the Latvian Academy of Sciences has called the Academy’s partner. The order, which Dombrava announced on social media on October 26, also names Gerald and Doris Hoppstaedter.
According to the LETA news agency, the Firmas.lv register lists the two as chair and deputy chair of the AS Lights supervisory council. Linde chairs its management board.
Dombrava said the review must establish whether the three acted lawfully in promoting bona fide business. The alternative, he said, is that they abused the residence permit system to create a merely formal basis for living in Latvia. Authorities have not yet established any violations, according to LETA.
A day later, LTV published its findings on AS Lights Medical, which Linde heads as chief executive with Gerald Hoppstaedter as development manager. According to LTV, the company had advertised help obtaining a Latvian residence permit in exchange for the €50,000 investment. The money was to go into a luxury care home for seniors in the village of Spuņciems, which LTV said does not yet exist.
The company’s website describes a rehabilitation and wellness complex with 110 rooms, 136 beds, and a spa, but gives no street address. According to information from Mārupe municipal council cited by LTV, Lights Medical bought a building in Spuņciems in 2022 and nothing has happened there since.
LTV has been unable to reach Linde since October 26. Its Panorāma program received word that she had fallen ill and would answer questions by email.
No answers had arrived by the time of the report, and the phone number Lights Medical lists did not connect. LTV did not report a comment from either Hoppstaedter.
IMI could not find a public email address for Lights Medical and sent questions to Linde through the Institute of Economics on October 28. She had not responded by the time of publication, and IMI will update this article if she does.
Investor exposure
Manpreet Kataria, managing director of Alpha Immigration Associates, called the allegations deeply concerning. He said they leave open whether the investors involved were complicit or were themselves victims. “An investor sitting in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, or India cannot realistically verify the ground operations of a Latvian company,” he said.
Investors abroad place their trust in the regulatory framework of an EU member state, Kataria argued. “A government cannot rigorously scrutinize investors while failing to apply equally rigorous standards to the companies receiving their money,” he said.
He proposed that Latvia restrict such investments to independently vetted, government-approved companies under ongoing compliance monitoring. Investors who acted in good faith “deserve protection, not punishment,” he said. He asked what the government will do “to protect the investors who put in their money trusting EU regulations and transparency.”
Serhan Aysever, managing partner of Beyond Global Partners, urged restraint. “It is important to allow the Latvian authorities to complete their investigations before drawing any conclusions,” he said.
“Ultimately, maintaining public confidence requires a collective commitment from governments, regulators, and industry professionals,” Aysever said. That commitment, he said, is “to uphold high standards, safeguard the integrity of the sector, and ensure that investment migration programs deliver genuine economic value.”
Academy ties
LTV identified three more websites marketing permits for the same project. All three connect to Linde and Gerald Hoppstaedter, and each bears either the Academy of Sciences’ address or the Institute of Economics’ name.
Gerald Hoppstaedter gave a 2019 presentation at the Academy under the Institute’s auspices, according to the English-language service of Latvian Public Service Media (LSM). The Austrian used it to recommend ways to attract capital from third countries.
According to the Lursoft business register as cited by LTV, Gerald Hoppstaedter chairs the Lights Medical supervisory council. The register lists his deputy as Kannan Vishwanath, the husband of Divya Kannan Vishwanath.
Divya Kannan Vishwanath received Latvian citizenship from the Saeima, Latvia’s parliament, for special merit on October 15. Lawmakers annulled that law on October 22 after posts on social media suggested she may have given false information about herself, according to LSM. She has denied the accusations, maintaining that the documents submitted to the Saeima were accurate and verified.
According to LETA, Academy president Ivars Kalviņš has said he based his recommendation of her on information from the Academy’s partner, Linde’s Institute of Economics. The Academy has scheduled a plenary meeting on November 26 at which members plan to discuss Kalviņš’s possible resignation.
OCMA’s statement
OCMA told LTV it could not yet say how many people the company had sponsored. It expects “the first results of the inspection” early next week. “At the same time, we can confirm that the aforementioned company has invited third-country nationals,” the office stated.
Inviting, or sponsoring, a foreigner is a routine step in Latvia’s residence permit process. The statement did not say the invitations themselves broke any rule.
OCMA said that it and the state security services vet every applicant before issuing a permit. It added that “the inviter is responsible for ensuring that the foreigner’s entry and stay in Latvia corresponds to the purpose of requesting a residence permit.”
On Wednesday, Dombrava praised the journalists’ work on LTV’s morning program Rīta Panorāma. He said he was fairly sure that further digging would reveal other companies tied to the same people or to others. The number of such companies is not excessive, he said, but a sizable number of people have obtained temporary residence permits this way.
Last investor route
The share capital route grants temporary residence to a foreigner who invests €50,000 in a Latvian company and pays a €10,000 state fee. The company must have no more than 50 employees and an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €10 million.
It must also pay at least €40,000 a year in taxes. No more than ten foreigners may qualify through any single company, and the new law also cut the permit from five years to two. A new €150,000 fund route exists in law, but the government has yet to create the state fund behind it.
In April, LTV’s investigative program De Facto found that the FIU had identified more than 20 companies under the same route. The FIU suspected them of facilitating fictitious investments.
A Saeima inquiry committee recommended in May that Latvia close its remaining investment routes, the company route included. On September 22, the Cabinet of Ministers approved an Interior Ministry immigration restriction plan built on that committee’s recommendations. Its 71 measures include tighter rules for investors, so that formal investments no longer serve as a path to residence.
Dombrava told Rīta Panorāma that the plan, which the government has yet to implement, aims to close such loopholes in the Immigration Law.
