A government authorised citizenship agent is an advisory firm that has been formally licensed by a sovereign government to act as the intermediary between that country's Citizenship by Investment (CBI) regulatory unit and an applicant. The licence is not a marketing claim — it is a legal designation, issued through a formal vetting process, and published on the country's official register.
Only an authorised agent can lawfully submit a CBI application on a client's behalf. Anyone else, no matter how prominent their marketing, is operating outside the programme. The consequences for the client range from rejected applications to financial loss to, in some cases, criminal exposure.
“Authorisation isn't a marketing badge. It is the floor of trust.”
What the authorisation actually covers
A government licence to act as a CBI agent is granted only after the firm itself has passed an extensive vetting process — background checks on the principals, financial substance review, demonstrated track record, and ongoing compliance commitments.
Once authorised, the agent is bound to a continuous set of obligations: maintaining anti-money-laundering (AML), counter-financing-of-terrorism (CFT), and know-your-client (KYC) procedures; conducting independent due-diligence on every applicant before submission; reporting suspicious activity to the CBI unit; and operating under direct supervision of the country's regulator.
A firm that calls itself a "promoter," a "consultant," or simply an "agent" without specifying government authorised has no legal standing to file applications. The distinction matters.
How to verify an agent's authorisation
Each Caribbean CBI unit publishes its list of authorised agents on its official government domain. The verification takes ninety seconds:
- Antigua and Barbuda — cip.gov.ag — published Authorised Agents register.
- Dominica — cbiu.gov.dm — Citizenship by Investment Unit register.
- Grenada — imagrenada.gd — Investment Migration Agency register.
- St. Kitts and Nevis — ciu.gov.kn — Citizenship by Investment Unit register.
- St. Lucia — cipsaintlucia.com — Citizenship by Investment Programme register.
If the firm you're considering does not appear on the relevant register — or if the firm refuses to identify which programmes they are authorised in — that is your answer.
Why this matters
The market for second citizenship attracts firms that operate outside the programmes they claim to represent. The patterns are predictable: a quoted price meaningfully above the published government minimum, a "fund" that isn't on the official register, vague answers when asked which unit they submit to, applications routed through third parties.
For the client, the outcome ranges from a rejected application — losing months of time and the non-refundable government processing fees — to outright fraud. We have, more times than we'd like, taken on files from clients who previously paid USD 100,000 or more to unauthorised operators for promises that were never real.
PassPro's authorisations
PassPro is currently authorised as a Citizenship by Investment agent in all five active Caribbean donation-route programmes: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia. Our licences are published on each country's official register and have been continuously renewed since the firm was founded in 2016.
If you would like the licence numbers and direct register links to verify our authorisations programme by programme, we'll provide them on request — and we recommend you do verify, with us or with any firm you are considering.
Founder & Principal Advisor