Middle Easterners Make Up Majority of Second-Citizenship Applicants, Report Says – Middle East Real Time – WSJ

Not surprising:

But statistics in a new report commissioned by Arton Capital, one of those firms, suggest people from the Middle East have come to dominate the citizenship-for-investment landscape.

Just shy of 60% of the world’s super-wealthy who apply for second citizenships come from the region, by the reckoning of Wealth-X, an information company that crunched numbers for the report. Despite containing just 5% of people classified as “ultra high net worth individuals” – multi-millionaires and billionaires – the Middle East now accounts for a majority of the world’s uber-wealthy citizenship-seekers.

Political instability probably has a lot to do with it. Since the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, scores of wealthy people from countries like Lebanon, Egypt and Syria have jumped on the second-citizenship bandwagon as a way to ensure they can still travel, do business and even relocate their families permanently if need be in the fact of instability. People from Lebanon, beset by spillover from Syria’s civil war, made up 15% of second-citizenship applicants, according to the report, while Syrians and Egyptians each made up 7%.

Middle Easterners Make Up Majority of Second-Citizenship Applicants, Report Says – Middle East Real Time – WSJ.