We work with genuine investors to the UK, advising on available UK business and personal immigration routes, explains Julie Moktadir.
Although the UK’s investor visa scheme was abolished in February 2022 following security concerns, a number of investors remain in the UK and are eligible to extend their stay.
Golden/investor visa programmes exist to encourage private investment into the given country for the benefit of its wider economy; any investment must therefore be real to meet this purpose.
Importantly, the Home Office is able to refuse visa applications both where they fail to meet a rigid tick box requirement and on a wider purposive basis due to sufficiently flexible tick boxes.
This was outlined in a recent decision (Wang) as the case relates to the interpretation of the Immigration Rules.
The case involves over 100 individuals who qualified for the UK’s investor visa following use of the ‘Maxwell’ financing scheme. In order to meet the £2million investment requirement, Maxwell Asset Management Ltd, owned by Russian national Dmitry Petrovich Kirpichenko, loaned £1million to investors on the proviso it was invested into Eclectic Capital Ltd, a company owned by his wife who then invested monies on into mainly Russian rather than British companies. As part of the points-based system approach, which equates fairness with objective criteria, qualification for the investor visa was presented as a matter of meeting tick box requirements. The Maxwell scheme may have circumvented the purpose of the immigration rules but it did, in fact, meet its exact terms on a literal interpretation. That qualification has now been overturned and demonstrates what barrister and author Colin Yeo terms the cake-ist approach to legal interpretation: the Home Office can refuse visa applications where they don't meet the tick box requirement and on a wider purposive basis due to sufficiently flexible tick boxes.
Stone King is at Bateman House, 82-88 Hills Road in Cambridge.
If you would like more information on the available business and personal immigration routes to the UK please do get in touch on 01223 351000.
