This is something I believe to be accurate but don’t have hard data on.
A Vanuatu passport seems worthless to me. It seems like a place where one would want to live under very few, very specific circumstances. There are many detailed stories of banking problems with these passports. Travel access is abysmal. I can’t imagine the African countries are much better, though the specific cases in which it might make sense are slightly more numerous, e.g., someone with business interests in West Africa wanting access to ECOWAS. I don’t see many instances where the value proposition of $100k US and total return on that amount of capital for one of these makes sense.
I’ve heard rumors of the Caribbean passports triggering enhanced due diligence at banks, but no detailed stories or confirmation. We can see the US and EU don’t like CBI with the travel bans and visa bonds applied to Caribbean islands that have lower overstay rates than ESTA-approved countries, and the EU’s moves against Caribbean CBI and Malta. I also suspect Georgia got pushback for their proposed CBI scheme last year. There are rumors that the EU will weaponize ETIAS against the islands.
Turkey seems to have found a niche: better than Nigeria but not good enough to suffer any fallout from a CBI program. The Caribbean islands might eventually fall to that level. They don’t have the diplomatic heft of an Argentina, which may or may not be able to get away with it.
I would expect Serbia to tighten their CBE (effectively unofficial CBI) at some point due to EU pressure. El Salvador is a bit of a joke at $1m US so they are being ignored. I’m sure they don’t do many of those. There is a profusion of “Vanuatus” and “Africas” with the new programs but if they can’t be used to go anywhere, no one cares enough to take action. Enjoy your unfettered access to the slums of Monrovia, I guess.
