In a downtown Athens building, a group of young Chinese women lounge on plush velvet couches, whispering in Mandarin while two young men at the bar sip complimentary espresso speaking Arabic.
“If it weren’t for the Chinese I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” said Vaggelis Kteniadis, 47, the owner of V2. “The Chinese are tired of being forbidden, not having options.”Advertisement That sort of demand has helped resurrect a domestic residential property market that lost 40% of its value between 2007 and last year, the biggest fall in the EU. While no specific figures are available, the 6,304 primary permits issued for an investment of 250,000 euros each would imply income for the Greek state of some 1.5 billion euros. Of those permits, 70% went to Chinese nationals.
A number of EU countries also sell citizenship. But the runaway success of both passport and visa programs among EU countries has sparked alarm in the EU’s executive, the European Commission. Malta’s 1-million-euro passport program has come under growing scrutiny since journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed by a car bomb in October 2017 while investigating corruption related to the program. An EU Parliament delegation in December 2017 said the “opacity” of the golden passport program risked importing criminals and money laundering to the EU.
“These people are millionaires but have to sign forms and prove they’re not elephants each time they travel,” Kteniadis said. “It’s humiliating.”
Why not, at least they’re paying, not illegally using up the social benefits.
NO! 😱 then eventually it will no longer be Greece!