Passports for sale: Yingluck is Cambodian, Jho Low is from St Kitts. Here’s where you could be from (if you have the cash)

Whether you’re running from the law or the taxman, or just seeking a smile at immigration, nationalities are yours for the taking if you’ve got US$100,000 or more

When the world’s your oyster, what country gives the best bang for your buck?

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The Cambodian passport: a US$300,000 bargain for some.

Published: 8:30am, 26 Jan 2019Updated: 4:41pm, 28 Jan 2019

The red passport emblazoned with the words “Kingdom of Cambodia” in gold might not be what anyone would expect Yingluck Shinawatra, former prime minister of Thailand, to present at an immigration checkpoint.

With visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to just 54 destinations worldwide, it is ranked among the least powerful passports in the world by the annual Henley Passport Index, at a lowly No. 84 out of 104.

Officially, anyone with US$300,000 to spare can pick up a Cambodian passport. That is what Cambodia requests as an investment before handing out its travel document.

Yingluck, in self-exile since 2017, before Thailand’s supreme court sentenced her to five years in prison for mishandling rice subsidies, used a Cambodian passport to register herself as sole director of a Hong Kong company incorporated last August last year, according to official filings. The disclosure, in a South China Morning Post story this month, added to the theory that she fled Thailand via Cambodia.

It also put the spotlight on the ease with which the world’s wealthy can obtain new passports or residency in a new country if they have the cash it takes – anything between US$100,000 and US$2 million.

This can all be above board and properly regulated, with thorough screening of applicants. In some cases, however, getting a new passport has been said to be as easy as shopping online, and the individual does not even have to show up in person.

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Passports for sale: Yingluck is Cambodian, Jho Low is from St Kitts. Here’s where you could be from (if you have the cash)

Whether you’re running from the law or the taxman, or just seeking a smile at immigration, nationalities are yours for the taking if you’ve got US$100,000 or more When the world’s your oyster, what country gives the best bang for your buck?

Whether you’re running from the law or the taxman, or just seeking a smile at immigration, nationalities are yours for the taking if you’ve got US$100,000 or more

When the world’s your oyster, what country gives the best bang for your buck?