Daily Star.com.lb By Brooke Anderson

It could be considered a marriage
of convenience between the financially strapped but politically stable
eastern Mediterranean countries of Greece and Cyprus and wealthy
Lebanese property investors.

Greece and Cyprus are fast-tracking
citizenship for high-net-worth property owners, as Lebanese who can
afford it are lining up to buy homes. This is the idea of the third
edition of the Beirut International property Fair, Residency and
Citizenship by Investment, a three-day event from May 16 to 18 at the
Beirut Habtoor Grand Hotel Convention Center. The event, with booths and
representatives from real estate agencies and immigration law firms
from different countries throughout the world – mainly Greece and
Cyprus, but also the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Malta – are showing
Lebanese how they can invest their way to citizenship.

Brochures
being distributed throughout the halls not only give instructions on
how to obtain citizenship, but also outline the perks of second
citizenships and give overviews of quality of life, security, business
activities, tax planning and retirement in various countries.

“Let’s
call it Plan B. Some Lebanese don’t feel safe,” says Carole Ghanem,
office manager at Green Steps, a Lebanon- and Cyprus-based real estate
company that sells property in Cyprus to Lebanese, giving them all the
information they need on how to apply for permanent residency through
their property purchase.

If they invest $300,000 or more, they can
get permanent residency after two months and then a Cypriot passport
after three and a half years. With an investment of 3 million euros
($3.4 million) or more, a passport can be issued in as little as two months. These rules have existed for about two years.

Starting
around the same time, a similar path to residency and citizenship now
exists for Greece. For 250,000 euros in property investment, a foreigner
can become a foreign resident on day one, giving them free movement to
the rest of the Schengen zone, automatically renewable every five years.

“People
want a safe exit,” says Panos Rozakis, general manager of Prime
Synergy, a property investment firm based in Athens, which has a Greek
residency division. Panos, who was most recently in Dubai, says his
clientele includes property investors from India, Lebanon, Afghanistan,
Iraq and Syria (though procedures for clients from war zones takes more
steps to process). He says that ever since the residency and citizenship
procedures were relaxed for real estate investors, there has been a
growing interest from the Middle East and more offices like his have
been popping up to serve the demand.

For many attendees at the exhibition, the appeal seems to be having a safe option outside Lebanon.

“We’ve
been in the Civil War in Lebanon, and we endured what we had to endure,
and at that time, we had to stay in Lebanon,” says retired businessman
Emile Azzam, attending with his wife. He adds that he doesn’t like the
concept of an exhibition that might encourage Lebanese to leave, but he
understands that many people like himself would want to have the option.

“Since
the situation in Lebanon is not that safe and you never know what will
happen, we’d like to have an escape route. We’d like to always come back
to Lebanon. When there are tough times, but we’d like a place nearby to
stay.”

By Brooke Anderson