Prohibition on changing name or surname in Cyprus

Cyprus wants to introduce a restriction on changing the first or last name of naturalised persons.

A recent bill to this effect was submitted to Parliament by the Ministry of the Interior.

According to a Ministry of Interior release the main focus is to amend Section 43 of the Basic Law in order to veto the ability to change the first and last names upon obtaining the Cyprus citizenship, as well as to oblige the beneficiaries to do so in their country of birth.

By doing so, the Cyprus Ministry of Interior intends to eliminate cases of abuse and/or misleading authorities in relation to the identity/identity of such persons.

It is worth noting that the Authority began to actively promote this bill following a complaint from Auditor General Odysseas Michaelidis. In particular, Mihaelidis stated that more than 100 investors, who received Cyprus passports under the programme "Citizenship for Investment", changed their names. At the same time the government of the island state did not notify the authorities in the place of their birth about the change in passport details. As a result, many investors ended up with two passports in different names, which is an infringement.

It should be recalled that thousands of foreigners were granted citizenship under Cyprus' investment programme.

The programme was originally designed to help the country's economy recover from the European debt crisis.

Citizenship was granted in exchange for investments of up to 2.5 million euro. The programme was particularly popular with Russian and Chinese citizens. But it was scrapped in 2020. An Al Jazeera investigation found that the passports were given to criminals and those under international sanctions.

In 2021, Cyprus conducted an investigation. It found that of 6,679 passports issued between 2007 and 2020, more than half were issued to people who did not meet the requirements. At the same time, many had been granted citizenship in other names.

In addition to conflicts of interest, there have been cases where real estate has been bought several times by different investors on the basis of forged agreements to make their investment in Cyprus appear to be sufficient. Sometimes executives of foreign and Cypriot companies were granted citizenship even though they could not be considered as investors as they were not owners of the businesses.

Source: stockwatch.com.cy

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