· NextMigrate Team
Cyprus Golden Passports: What the Al Jazeera Papers Exposed
The Cyprus golden passport scandal is the story of an EU country that sold citizenship for a minimum investment of about €2 million and handed passports to people its own rules should have refused. In August 2020 Al Jazeera published "The Cyprus Papers", more than 1,400 leaked applications naming about 2,500 new citizens, some of them convicted criminals or people under investigation (Al Jazeera, 23 August 2020). Two months later, undercover footage showed the speaker of parliament offering "full support" to people representing a fake investor with a money-laundering conviction. Cyprus abolished the scheme within days. A judicial inquiry later found that 53 percent of the 6,779 passports issued were granted illegally (RFI/AFP, 15 October 2021), and by September 2025 Cyprus had revoked citizenship from 360 people (IMI Daily, 15 September 2025). In February 2026 a court acquitted the two politicians filmed in the sting.
That is the short answer. If an agent is offering you, or a client, a fast EU passport for cash, the rest of this page is your due diligence.
Imagine you run a construction company in Shenzhen, or a trading business in Dubai. An agent invites you to lunch. For €2 million in seaside apartments in Limassol, he says, your whole family gets EU passports in about six months. No need to live there. Visa-free travel to most of the world. Schools in Paris, offices in Frankfurt. The program is legal, run by the government, and thousands of people have already done it.
You sign. You fly in once to collect the passports. Your teenage son starts applying to universities in Europe as a citizen.
Five years later, a letter arrives in Greek. The government intends to take the citizenship back. Your son's too.
Most buyers never faced that letter. Hundreds did. This page explains what the public record shows: what the Cyprus Papers revealed, what the undercover footage captured, what the inquiry and courts decided, who lost their passports, and why "citizenship for sale" in the EU now sits on weak legal ground.
Key facts about the Cyprus golden passport scheme
| Official name | Cyprus Investment Programme (CIP) |
| Price | A minimum investment of 2.15 million euros, about $2.5 million, under the rules in 2020 (Al Jazeera, 23 August 2020) |
| What buyers got | Cypriot citizenship, and with it EU citizenship and the right to live and work across the EU |
| Passports issued | 6,779 between 2007 and 2020, according to the Nicolatos inquiry (RFI/AFP, 15 October 2021) |
| Money raised | More than seven billion euros since 2013, according to Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera, 12 October 2020) |
| Found illegal | 53 percent of passports, according to the inquiry |
| Abolished | Announced 13 October 2020, the day after Al Jazeera's undercover film; the government said it would end on 1 November 2020 |
| Revoked so far | 360 people (101 investors and 259 family members) by September 2025 (IMI Daily, 15 September 2025) |
| Criminal trial | Former House President Demetris Syllouris and former MP Christakis Giovanis were acquitted on 17 February 2026 (Cyprus Mail, 17 February 2026) |
What were the Cyprus Papers?
The Cyprus Papers were a leak obtained by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit. They contained "more than 1,400 approved applications" submitted between 2017 and 2019. With family members included, "the total number of individuals granted European passports" reached "nearly 2,500" (Al Jazeera, 23 August 2020).
Applicants came from more than 70 countries. Al Jazeera counted about 1,000 from Russia, 500 from China and 100 from Ukraine, with others from the UK, the US, Mali, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and South Korea.
What made the leak a scandal was who was on the list. Al Jazeera said the Cypriot government "has been found to have granted European citizenship to criminals, those under criminal investigation and to people who are considered to be at a high risk of corruption." In several cases, it reported, people "obtained their Cypriot passports shortly before criminal charges were filed against them."
Some of this was legal at the time. Until February 2019, applicants only had to prove a clean criminal record, "although it was up to the applicants to establish this themselves." Stricter rules came in that month, banning anyone who had ever been under investigation, charged or convicted, anyone under sanctions, and politically exposed persons. But "these rules are not retrospective", so earlier buyers kept their passports (Al Jazeera, 23 August 2020).
The government's response at the time. Cyprus said it had tightened its rules and that "each application submitted under the CIP was in accordance with the regulations in place at the time." It passed a law in July 2020 allowing it to strip citizenship for serious wrongdoing.
The sting: "The Cyprus Papers Undercover"
On 12 October 2020 Al Jazeera released a second film. Its reporters posed as representatives of a fictitious Chinese investor who had been "sentenced to seven years in prison for money laundering", a record that should have disqualified him outright (Al Jazeera, 12 October 2020).
According to Al Jazeera, the reporters were passed from a lawyer to a property developer and up to the speaker of parliament. The footage recorded:
- A registered service provider for the scheme saying he had handled a client jailed for two years for corruption and money laundering: "We had ways to justify everything and he went through with the approval of his passport application." He also suggested changing the name on the new passport.
- An executive of a property developer saying: "The more you invest, [the more] you are in more favourable terms. You can 'skip the waiting list', as we say."
- The MP and developer Christakis Giovanis saying: "It's not easy. But I can promise, we shall do the best. And I believe we have the experience."
- House President Demetris Syllouris saying: "You can tell him that he will have, without mentioning my name or anybody else's, full support from Cyprus." He added that the support would be "at any level", political, economic and social.
Their side, as reported by Al Jazeera. The lawyer said he understood from the start that what was proposed involved money laundering and that he was "fishing for more details", and that he later reported the approach to Cyprus's anti-money laundering unit. Giovanis and the company executive said they shared their suspicions with the lawyer, and that their dealings were meant to gather information for a report "without 'tipping them off'". Syllouris said "he provided no services to the applicant" and pointed to the lawyer's report.
Transparency International's Laure Brillaud told Al Jazeera: "What all this shows is that it's not just a few bad apples. It's the system that is broken beyond repair."
How the scheme fell in 72 hours
- 12 October 2020. Al Jazeera releases the undercover film.
- 13 October 2020. The cabinet decides to abolish the program. Its statement said the decision was based on "long-standing weaknesses" and "abusive exploitation of the provisions of the program", according to a Cypriot law firm quoting the ministries (Hadjivangeli & Partners), with an end date of 1 November.
- The same day. Attorney General George Savvides orders a criminal investigation: "What has been published in the last few hours by the Al Jazeera news network is causing outrage, anger and concern among the people" (Al Jazeera Media Network, 13 October 2020).
- The same week. Giovanis resigns as an MP. Syllouris steps away from his duties and later resigns as speaker, while denying wrongdoing and saying his comments were taken out of context (Al Jazeera, 16 April 2021).
The European Commission launched legal proceedings against Cyprus over the scheme in 2020, arguing that granting EU citizenship for set payments, "without any genuine link to the state concerned, undermined EU citizenship" (Al Jazeera, 16 April 2021).
What the inquiry found
The government appointed a board of inquiry led by Myron Nicolatos, a former president of the Supreme Court.
- Interim report, April 2021. Investigators examined 2,478 passports issued from 2007 to 2016 and 417 more, considered high risk, issued up to 2020. Nicolatos said naturalisations that "were issued by exceeding the boundaries of the law" made up "51.81 percent of the total" (Al Jazeera, 16 April 2021).
- Final findings, June 2021. The inquiry concluded that 53 percent of the 6,779 passports issued were granted illegally, and pointed to a due diligence vacuum and insufficient background checks. Nicolatos said: "It is obvious the Cyprus Investment Programme was operating between 2007 and 2020 with gaps and deficiencies, an inadequate legislative framework and almost no regulatory framework" (RFI/AFP, 15 October 2021).
"Illegal" here mostly describes how the state issued the passports. It does not mean every buyer did something wrong. Many investors followed the process their lawyers gave them. That distinction matters later, when the state came to take passports back.
Who lost their passports
Revocation started slowly. In October 2021 the cabinet launched the process for 39 investors and six family members (RFI/AFP, 15 October 2021). It sped up after 2023.
By early September 2025, Cyprus Mail reported 332 revoked "golden" passports belonging to 95 investors and 237 family members, with 112 cases completed by formal deprivation orders (Cyprus Mail, 4 September 2025). Two weeks later the total reached 360 people, 101 investors and 259 family members (IMI Daily, 15 September 2025).
Look at that ratio. For every investor who lost a passport, more than two family members did too. Children who grew up as EU citizens can lose that status because of a parent's file.
According to Cyprus Mail, almost all of those affected had been flagged as high risk by the inquiry. Many had faced criminal charges at home, were wanted by police, or had convictions for serious crimes. Others "did not meet the legal requirement of being of 'good character'". Some never finished the properties tied to their applications, or sold them and left Cyprus after getting citizenship.
The process has safeguards. A lawyer told IMI Daily that people receive written notice and have 30 days to object before an advisory committee, then can appeal to the Administrative Court within 75 days.
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The trial: why the politicians were acquitted
This is the part of the story most often told wrongly online, so here it is precisely.
On 17 February 2026 the Nicosia criminal court found Demetris Syllouris and Christakis Giovanis not guilty. By majority, the three judges ruled that charges of conspiracy to defraud the Republic, abuse of power, bribing a public official and unlawful interference in naturalisation procedures "could not be proved" (Cyprus Mail, 17 February 2026).
The court's reasons, as reported by Cyprus Mail:
- The Al Jazeera video "was not accepted as evidence", and two charges linked to the broadcast had been withdrawn by the prosecution.
- The prosecution had to prove the defendants received financial gain to influence a civil servant, and did not.
- No finance ministry officer testified, and no civil servant said they had been pressured.
- Emails were not admitted against the defendants because their senders and recipients did not testify.
- Charges against the lawyer and the developer's executive had already been dropped by the attorney general.
One judge in the minority believed the evidence could support conviction on at least one charge. Syllouris told reporters: "I was, and remain, clean," and "Corruption and collusion results in wealth, and I have no wealth" (Reuters via Yahoo News, 17 February 2026).
So the record has two parts that both stand. The inquiry found the state issued most passports outside the law. The criminal court found the prosecution did not prove its case against the two men. Both are true.
What the EU's top court said in 2025
Cyprus closed its scheme, but Malta kept one. On 29 April 2025 the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Malta's 2020 investor citizenship scheme broke EU law.
The court's press release is blunt: "The acquisition of Union citizenship cannot result from a commercial transaction." Where a member state grants nationality "in direct exchange for predetermined investments or payments through a transactional procedure, it manifestly infringes those principles. Such 'commercialisation' of citizenship is incompatible with the basic concept of Union citizenship" (Court of Justice of the EU, Press Release 52/25, 29 April 2025).
For a buyer, this changes the question. Before 2025 you might ask, "Is this program legal in that country?" Now you also have to ask, "Can an EU country lawfully sell this at all?" The EU's highest court has said a pure payment-for-passport deal cannot.
Can you still buy a Cyprus passport?
No. The citizenship by investment program ended in November 2020. Anyone offering you "Cyprus citizenship by investment" today is selling something that does not exist, or a long residence route dressed up as a passport.
Residence permits for investors are a separate thing. Many countries still offer residency in return for investment, with citizenship only after years of real residence, language tests and the normal naturalisation rules. Our guide to golden visa countries explains which programs are open, closing or closed, and the difference between buying residence and buying citizenship.
Red flags in a "passport for sale" offer
| What you hear | Why it is a warning |
|---|---|
| "EU passport in six months, no need to live there" | The EU's top court has ruled that citizenship in exchange for payments infringes EU law (CJEU, 29 April 2025) |
| "Cyprus citizenship by investment is still open through us" | It closed in November 2020 |
| "Your past doesn't matter if you invest more" | That is close to what Al Jazeera's undercover reporters were told, and it is what the inquiry and revocations were about |
| "We can change the name on the passport" | Suggested on camera in the Cyprus sting. A new identity for a person with a record is the opposite of due diligence |
| "Your family is covered for life" | Cyprus revoked 259 family members' citizenship along with 101 investors |
| "Pay through our company, we handle the government" | You should pay government fees to the government and know exactly what each other payment buys |
| "There are connections at the top" | Political access is not a legal route. In Cyprus it ended in a criminal trial |
The honest lesson
The Cyprus scheme was legal, government-run and popular. That is exactly why it fooled so many careful people. A legal program can still be badly run, and a passport issued badly can be taken back years later.
If you want to live in Europe, the safer routes are slower: a work permit, a residence permit, real time in the country, then citizenship on the normal rules. They are less exciting to sell. They are also much harder to take away.
If you are comparing investor routes with work or study routes for your family, our startup visa guide covers routes where you build a real business and earn residence on firmer ground. For a cautionary tale from the US side of investor migration, see the Jay Peak EB-5 fraud.
Frequently asked questions
What was the Cyprus golden passport scandal?
Cyprus sold citizenship to foreign investors for a minimum of about €2 million in property or other investments. In 2020 Al Jazeera published 1,400 leaked approved applications and filmed senior politicians offering help to a fake investor with a money-laundering conviction. Cyprus abolished the program, and a judicial inquiry found 53 percent of 6,779 passports were issued illegally.
Is the Cyprus golden passport program abolished?
Yes. The cabinet decided on 13 October 2020 to abolish the Cyprus Investment Programme, with the government setting 1 November 2020 as the end date. No new citizenship by investment applications have been possible since then.
How much did a Cyprus golden passport cost?
Al Jazeera reported a minimum investment of 2.15 million euros, about $2.5 million, under the rules in force in 2020, usually through real estate. Al Jazeera's 2021 report on the inquiry described the minimum as two million euros. The program raised more than seven billion euros for Cyprus between 2013 and 2020, according to Al Jazeera.
What happened in the Cyprus golden passport court case?
On 17 February 2026 a Nicosia criminal court acquitted former House President Demetris Syllouris and former MP Christakis Giovanis by majority. The court said the prosecution had not proved its case. The Al Jazeera footage was not accepted as evidence, and charges against a lawyer and a company executive had earlier been dropped.
How many Cyprus golden passports were revoked?
By September 2025 Cyprus had revoked citizenship from 360 people since the program ended, 101 investors and 259 family members, according to IMI Daily. About 112 cases had been completed with formal deprivation orders by early September 2025, according to Cyprus Mail.
Can I still get Cyprus citizenship by investment?
No. The program ended in November 2020. Anyone offering Cyprus citizenship by investment today is offering something the government no longer sells. Investor residence permits are a different product and do not give you citizenship.
Is buying EU citizenship legal?
The Court of Justice of the EU ruled on 29 April 2025 that Malta's investor citizenship scheme infringed EU law, saying "the acquisition of Union citizenship cannot result from a commercial transaction." Many EU countries still offer investor residence permits, which are different from citizenship.
What was the Nicolatos inquiry?
A board of inquiry led by former Supreme Court president Myron Nicolatos, set up after the scandal. Its interim report in April 2021 found 51.81 percent of examined naturalisations exceeded the boundaries of the law. Its final findings, reported in June 2021, put the figure at 53 percent of 6,779 passports.
