Remember kiddies, the National Party bought you Kim Dotcom

New Zealand’s Investor Visa Shift: A Useful Path for the Wealthy, But at What Cost?

The government is relaxing the rules on investor visas. This will enable the very wealthy to effectively ‘buy’ New Zealand residency.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced the changes on Sunday. Under the new policy, a minimum of NZD$5 million will be required for ‘Growth’ category investors, while NZD$10 million will be required for ‘Balanced’ category investors. The latter category now includes property development as acceptable investments.

Ironically, a similar policy by a previous National government is responsible for Kim Dotcom gaining New Zealand residency in 2010. This case demonstrates why it is foolish to base your immigration decisions on an applicant’s bank balance.

In September 2009, Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman, in a speech to the NZ Chinese Business Chamber, celebrated changes the National Government was making as part of its ‘Business Migrant package’, including the introduction of the Investor Plus category. Despite the policy changes being then a month old, Coleman boasted that there were already three Investor Plus applications in process. Given the timing, it is possible that one of these applications was Kim Dotcom.

Mr Dotcom came in under the Investor Plus category that allows people to gain residency if they invest NZD$10 million in Government bonds. This was despite Mr Dotcom disclosing criminal convictions, including one for fraud in Germany.

This makes the Key government responsible for Dotcom. It has been a long saga.

Good character?

Dotcom also applied to buy a number of properties in New Zealand, including a Coatesville mansion. This required the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) to consider whether Dotcom was of ‘good character’” under the Overseas Investment Act.

Dotcom submitted a statutory declaration in support of his own good character, witnessed by a Hong Kong Lawyer, Fee Chung Ming Johnny. Another lawyer working for Dotcom, Greg Towers of Simpson Grierson, extolled the “significant on-going financial benefit to the economy of New Zealand, especially Auckland’s North Shore” should the application be approved, and suggested Dotcom could reconsider his investment intentions should any single application be declined.

As James Ayers noted in ‘Kim Dotcom and the Good Character Test’, the OIO were keen to conclude Dotcom was of good character.

“The OIO stated: “Mr Dotcom has been convicted of a number of offences in both Germany and Hong Kong. However, despite some of these offences being serious, our view is that provide relatively little insight into Mr Dotcom’s character”. So criminal convictions don’t provide the OIO with much insight as to a person’s character?…

The OIO went on to state: ”There are some discrepancies between the information provided by Mr Dotcom (and his German legal advisor) and certain media reports. Our view is that nothing turns on the discrepancies. The offences are serious regardless of whether Mr Dotcom’s version of events or the media’s version of the events is most accurate”. So the OIO considered them serious regardless of who was telling the truth but this didn’t reflect on Mr Dotcom’s character?”