Caribbean States Launch Pilot: Citizens Can Sell Citizenship to Investors (CTP)

This piece was prepared as a satirical April Fools’ prank (April 1, 2026). Next week, IMI promises to return with a new humorous storyline.

St. Johns, April 1 — Five Caribbean governments have announced the launch of a pilot program under which citizens would be able to sell their citizenship to foreign investors.

Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Lucia jointly introduced a mechanism called Citizenship Transfer Protocol (CTP). According to the initiative’s authors, citizenship should be treated as a transferable asset that can be assigned to approved foreign buyers in “direct-to-party” transactions.

For each completed deal, the states plan to collect VAT, with the rate depending on the jurisdiction.

Under the CTP, citizens can set their own asking price. The expected range, according to a spokesperson, is $50,000 to $500,000, while the final price is supposedly determined by the seller’s “persuasiveness.”

Buyers must complete standard due diligence under CBI programs (Citizenship by Investment). Sellers, as claimed, will also need to demonstrate a “sufficient degree of desperation”—a criterion that the announcement does not specify.

New bureaucracy and familiar acronyms

To run the CTP, each country plans to create a dedicated structure: CTP Citizenship Transfer Unit (CTP CTU). It will operate independently from the existing Citizenship by Investment (CBI) mechanisms.

Inside the CTP CTU, a Due Diligence Unit (CTP CTU DDU) will review both sides of the transaction—both buyer and seller.

The protocol also addresses risk: if a citizen sells their citizenship without arranging an alternative status in advance, they could end up without citizenship (i.e., becoming stateless) as a result of the deal.

At the same time, judging by remarks from the working group, there is a “return option”: sellers who later regret the decision can apply for citizenship through the standard CBI channel—but at full price.

As a spokesperson for the joint secretariat put it: “The system is good because it closes the loop: a person sells their citizenship, receives a lump sum, lives for a few years without status, and then reverses everything—while the state earns revenue on both ends.”

“Register of Approved Sellers”

Not everyone will be allowed to sell citizenship. To get into circulation, a citizen must apply to be included in the Register of Approved Sellers, maintained by the CTP CTU.

The application involves a non-refundable fee of $1,500. In the joint statement, the fee is described as a “modest administrative charge,” which—according to the same text—should also demonstrate the applicant’s “serious intent.”

Approved sellers receive a unique SIN (Seller Identification Number), and their details are added to a searchable database.

If a seller needs to be removed from the register—voluntarily or by regulator decision—an additional procedure and extra payment will be required.

According to a source, the DDU has already rejected “several applications,” judging candidates to be “too financially well-off.”

In addition to direct party-to-party deals, the protocol introduces a Wholesale Transfer Framework (WTF): licensed intermediaries may receive citizenship quotas/packages in bulk for subsequent resale.

Under the WTF, intermediaries will be allowed to acquire multiple positions from approved sellers and then “package” them for distribution to final buyers in key markets.

“Perceived paradox” and price restrictions

If negotiating directly is difficult, sellers can hire licensed marketing agents to find offers. The agents’ commission is capped at 10% of the final price.

To “preserve the dignity of citizenship,” the CTP sets a minimum sale price of $50,000 per transaction. Attempts to sell for less on secondary platforms come with penalties—ranging from fines to, as observers separately note, withdrawal of citizenship.

Lawyers, meanwhile, point to the questionable logic: how exactly citizenship withdrawal would work for a seller trying to sell it in the first place. In response to questions, the joint secretariat said only that “the regulatory construct is internally consistent, and any paradox is the result of an observer’s misinterpretation.”

Children excluded, dependants bundled

Children under 18 cannot be the subject of a citizenship sale.

At the same time, passports can be “bundled” for eligible dependants into a single transaction, including spouses, unmarried dependent siblings under 30, dependent parents, and grandparents. Such operations are described as “family bucket sales”.

Withdrawal and “auction-result citizenship”

If, after the buyer is naturalized, they are found guilty of a “serious crime,” the acquired citizenship may be withdrawn. Under the mechanism’s terms, however, the citizenship is not returned to the original seller.

Instead, the withdrawn status goes into a state pool and will then be resold at public auctions to a qualifying winner.

For Grenada, according to the description, such cases will be marketed under the brand “foreclosure citizenships”—citizenship sold with a discount.

Yearly quotas

To limit the scale of operations, each country sets annual caps on the number of transfers. Officially, this is explained as necessary to prevent “full depletion of the population.”

As reported, Dominica’s limit is set at 2,000 transfers per year, which, according to authorities’ estimates, is “within sustainable statelessness levels.” St. Lucia does not disclose its own cap, citing national security concerns.

Statelessness as a “tax exemption”

The pilot’s authors plan to promote the CTP inside participating countries through campaigns highlighting the benefits of “lack of citizenship” from a tax perspective. A draft brochure for Antigua reportedly says: “Before, you paid taxes in Antigua. Now you pay taxes nowhere.”

The European Commission said it finds the initiative “extremely worrying,” but also noted that it could not identify a specific EU rule the protocol violates. According to one representative, the legal team “reviewed the document for a week but still couldn’t find a relevant directive to point to.”

“Sovereignty-chain technology” and competing conclusions

In the investment migration market, legal memoranda have already appeared claiming that the CTP “technically does not contradict existing rules,” because “nobody expected this scenario.” One review, according to reports, reaches 14 pages, but there is still no single final position.

At the same time, the International Monetary Fund reportedly circulated an internal working paper titled “Voluntary Statelessness and GDP Per Capita: A Caribbean Experiment.” The abstract reportedly says: “additional research is required”—which, as economists note, often means it is not possible to draw conclusions in an academically sound way.

Separately, one anonymous blockchain company announced the launch of CitSwap—a decentralized citizenship exchange based on “sovereignty-chain technology,” as described in its white paper.

Separately: St. Kitts and Nevis request U.S. assistance

Amid this story, the government of St. Kitts and Nevis reportedly submitted a request for foreign assistance from the United States due to an “expected surge in stateless persons” on its territory. The U.S. State Department’s response has not yet been received.

Happy April Fools’ Day from the IMI team.

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