Among the recipients were Salmo Bazkka, suspected by Italian authorities of participating in an international money laundering network, and Atiya Khoury, who landed on the US Treasury Department sanction list for assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2016, according to a joint investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) partner Direkt36 and Hungarian news site 444.
By the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP), Mar 29, 2018 Fishing for votes ahead of the April 8 parliamentary elections, Europe’s loudest anti-migrant leader is promising to keep Hungary immigrant-free, yet silently Viktor Orban’s government has granted residence permits to thousands of foreigners willing to pay for them, including two Syrians who pose serious security risks. Speaking of migrants trying to reach Europe, Orban said in a state of the nation address end of February he believes that “we Hungarians have a future if we remain Hungarian: if we cultivate the Hungarian language, defend our Christian and Hungarian culture, and preserve independence and Hungarian freedom.” However, between 2013 and 2017, the government that built the first barbed-wire fence along its borders handed out nearly 20,000 permanent residence permits for residency bond investors and their family members. While Chinese nationals received about 16,000 of the permits, they were also issued to hundreds of Russians and dozens of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. The Hungarian authorities said that they cannot reveal the identity or any information about the individuals that participated in the program. But among the recipients were Salmo Bazkka, suspected by Italian authorities of participating in an international money laundering network, and Atiya Khoury, who landed on the US Treasury Department sanction list for assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2016, according to a joint investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) partner Direkt36 and Hungarian news site 444. […] https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/7844-sy ... ht-hungarian-golden-visas
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