Lebanon’s Parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee approved a government-drafted bill on June 22 that would grant residency to non-residents who invest at least US$500,000 in the country. It still needs a vote in the full Parliament and implementing regulations before becoming law.
Committee chair Ibrahim Kanaan presented it as a tax-residency instrument rather than a standard golden visa. The bill would give “the non-resident in Lebanon, whether a foreigner or a Lebanese working abroad who needs what is called tax residency, a golden residency,” he said, conditioned on an investment of “no less than US$500,000” across three approved sectors. He likened the concept to Dubai’s golden residency.
Qualifying capital would have to enter through three sectors, the committee has not yet named, with real estate purchases still bound by Lebanon’s foreign-ownership law.
Funds would have to arrive from abroad and pass what Kanaan called “strict scrutiny … to prevent any attempt at money laundering.” That requirement routes the program through Lebanon’s “fresh dollar” channel, the post-2019 money that still moves freely, while pre-2019 deposits stay frozen across the banking system.
Each family member seeking the same tax-residence status would pay an annual fee of “no less than US$50,000,” Kanaan said. He cast the program as “a door that creates jobs, brings money into the state treasury, and encourages investments,” adding that it would do so only “when the conditions and requirements are available.” The bill originated with the government.
Existing Routes
Foreign nationals can already secure Lebanese residence permits without local employment, through the independent-means route. Where that permit asks only for self-support, the new program demands a large, monitored investment and grants tax-residence status. Whether it sits beside the existing permit or supplants it is unclear.
That tax-residence framing carries its own logic. Lebanon taxes income on a territorial basis, reaching only earnings from activity inside the country, not worldwide income. For a non-resident Lebanese professional, a formal tax home in such a system can be worth more than the residence card itself.
A Tough Sell
The timing invites scrutiny. Since October 2024, Lebanon has sat on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list, a position the June 2026 plenary kept in place.
Depositors remain locked out of billions frozen since the 2019 collapse. A US-Iran framework signed on June 17 calls for ending military operations in Lebanon, though Israel and Hezbollah never signed it, Israeli forces have not withdrawn, and strikes continued in the days before the committee acted.
Maria Wehbe, an advisor at Arton Capital, called the draft “somewhat ambitious.” She pointed to laws Lebanon has yet to modernize, noting that “Lebanese mothers still cannot pass their Lebanese nationality to their children or non-Lebanese spouses.”
Her sharper objection is commercial. Wehbe asked who would commit US$500,000, plus US$50,000 a year per family member, to Lebanon when the same capital could go to countries “that are not on the FATF gray list, have not endured one of the largest banking collapses and alleged Ponzi-like financial crises in modern history, and are not still dealing with the aftermath of billions of dollars in frozen deposits since 2019.”
Two practical doubts follow. Stripping out the bank-deposit route and leaving only real estate or company investment, she asked who, “in a heavily cash-based economy such as Lebanon’s,” would verify that the full US$500,000 “was genuinely invested and transparently transferred.”
Then there is capacity. “Can General Security realistically process and manage a potentially large volume of applications efficiently?” she asked. “There are many unanswered questions.”
She does not dismiss the intent. The effort to propose solutions and initiatives is welcome, she said, yet “this may not be the right timing, nor the right framework in terms of investment thresholds and mechanisms.” All of it, she added, comes “before even addressing Lebanon’s complex internal dynamics, infrastructure challenges, and numerous other sensitivities.”
A Wider Trend
Others read the proposal as part of a broader awakening. Tony Ebraheem, founder of Triple One Immigration Services, said he is seeing “a sharp increase in awareness from government officials in different countries of golden visas, or even citizenship by investment (CBI), as important tools to attract high-net-worth individuals.”
He expects the trend to spread: “Soon many countries will follow, and now it’s the investor’s choice to choose the best option.”
What happens next is a parliamentary vote, then regulations that would have to name the three eligible sectors, fix the compliance process, and hand the workload to General Security. Until that text appears, the US$500,000 figure and the US$50,000 annual fee rest on a committee chair’s summary, not on published law.
