Vanuatu Just Threw Its Own Citizens by Investment Under the Bus

By Parviz Malakouti-Fitzgerald, Esq.

Beautiful beaches of Vanuatu

On June 29, 2026, Vanuatu and Australia signed the Nakamal Agreement, a bilateral security and economic cooperation treaty. Buried inside it is a sentence that should worry anyone holding, or considering, Vanuatu citizenship by investment.

Article 6 of the agreement states that Vanuatu “shall develop effective mechanisms to differentiate citizenship by investment from other forms of citizenship.” Why would a government want to distinguish citizens who obtained their status through investment from citizens who obtained it through birth or naturalization? It is not to give investor citizens special treatment. It is to make them easier to identify and easier to treat differently, almost certainly for the worse. As I've written before, citizens by investment benefit from having their citizenships blend in, to be as "gray" as possible.

Vanuatu-Australia Nakamal Agreement, Article 6

Once Vanuatu builds a mechanism to flag citizens by investment, that flag does not stay contained between Vanuatu and Australia.

Other countries and unions, such as the US, UK, EU and others, will use the same distinction. It becomes far easier for any third country to single out Vanuatu's investor citizens for extra screening, tighter vetting, or degraded springboard benefits, such as visa-free access, if that access survives at all. Of course no government will call this discrimination. It will be framed as an integrity measure, a security enhancement, or due diligence modernization. The substance will be the same. I expect the first real world consequences at latest within two years of implementation, if Vanuatu follows through on what it signed.

Lastly, I've seen a few adventurous CBI agents and other professionals in the citizenship by investment industry comment that this is a positive deveopment for ni-Vanuatu citizens by investment. We advise our readers to be highly skeptical of anyone in the citizenship by investment industry who tries to spin this commitment in Article 6 as a good thing. This spells the outline for an intent to create a two-tiered citizenship structure for Vanuatu in practice.

Before committing to any citizenship by investment program, talk to someone who will give you the full picture, including the risks. Book a consultation with Malakouti Law.

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