Saudi family of five, Antigua citizenship in 19 weeks

The principal contacted us at the end of August through a referral from a Bahraini banker we’ve worked with before. Family of five, two parents in their early forties, three children aged 14, 11 and 7. Saudi nationals, primary residence in Riyadh, secondary apartment in Marbella. Business: a mid-size pharmaceuticals distribution holding company.

The brief was simple in their head: “something European, fast, under half a million dollars.” What they actually wanted, once we talked it through on the second call, was a passport that would let the children attend boarding school in the UK without the visa cycle and let the family travel for medical appointments in Switzerland without four-week embassy lead times.

What we ruled out, and why

We spent the first hour of the discovery call cutting options.

Portugal Golden Visa. Would have worked for residency. The 2023 reforms had already closed the real-estate route, leaving fund subscriptions at a €500K minimum plus around €60K in setup costs. More importantly, the path to passport is five years of evidenced physical presence at seven days per year, plus a language test. They were not going to do the language test.

Türkiye CBI. Closer to budget, USD 400K real estate or USD 500K bank deposit, three months to passport. But Türkiye does not yet have a visa-waiver agreement with Schengen at the time of writing, which kills the EU travel argument that was the entire point of the file.

Caribbean Five. Came down to either Antigua or Grenada. Grenada has the US E-2 treaty benefit, which matters for founders planning to open a business in the United States. This family was not. Antigua’s NDF contribution was USD 230K for a family of four; with the third child it stepped to USD 245K plus the additional dependent due-diligence fee.

We sent a written cost comparison the same day. The decision was made on the third call: Antigua, NDF route, file opened the following week.

The numbers

| Line item | Amount | | --- | --- | | Government NDF contribution (family of 5) | USD 245,000 | | Due diligence (USD 7.5K x 4 adults + USD 4K x 2 dependents over 12) | USD 38,000 | | Government processing fee | USD 7,500 | | Passport issuance fee | USD 1,200 | | Translator / apostille / courier | USD 1,400 | | Our advisory fee | USD 27,500 | | Underwriter sub-counsel (independent Antigua-licensed agent) | included in our fee | | Banker introduction fees | USD 0 (existing relationship) | | Total | USD 320,600 |

The Saudi end client’s final out-of-pocket landed at USD 268,400 because the NDF was paid from a corporate account at the holding-company level for tax reasons we won’t go into here; the comparative numbers above include the gross.

What slowed the file

Eight weeks in, the first DD pass came back with a query on the source of funds for one of the older transfers, a 2019 dividend distribution that the family’s Riyadh accountant could substantiate but had not initially translated into a CIU-acceptable format. We turned it around in 11 days with a notarised statement from the holding company’s auditor, but it cost us a fortnight on the calendar. We’d budgeted 16 weeks. We landed at 19.

If we ran the file again from scratch, the only thing we’d change is the front-end source-of-funds review. We now run our own pre-screen on every Gulf file before submission, using the same checklist the CIU’s outsourced DD firm runs. We do not catch everything they catch, but we catch most of it, and an extra week in our office is cheaper than two weeks in theirs.

Where the family is now

Passports issued in late January. The eldest started at a school in Hertfordshire in April; the family used the Antigua passports to enter the UK on a standard visitor visa stamp without prior consular processing, which had been the bottleneck. Tax position has not changed, they remain Saudi tax residents. The Antigua citizenship is held passively.

The principal sent a referral to a cousin in Jeddah two weeks after passport issuance. That file opened in May.