Lebanon is planning to establish a « golden visa » for foreigners able to invest $500,000 in the country. On paper, the idea may seem modern. In Lebanese reality, it looks like a very chic invitation to enter a house whose walls are still shaking. And the real question is not just who will come. She knows why someone would come.
You had to dare. And as often, Lebanon dares. The country did not resolve the banking crisis, did not return depositor money, did not stabilize its economy, did not secure its territory, did not stop Israeli violations in the South, did not rebuild its destroyed villages, but is already thinking of selling privileged access to foreign investors.
A golden visa, then. Golden visa. Golded like promises made to depositors before their economies disappeared behind invented circulars, restrictions and exchange rates. Golded as the slogans of reform repeated at each international conference. Domed like these rescue plans that still die somewhere between the Council of Ministers, the Bank of Lebanon, commercial banks and the well-understood interests of those who have already saved what they could save.
The concept would be simple: you have $500,000, you can claim a privileged residence. In a normal country, such a mechanism is based on a clear promise: legal certainty, financial stability, credible banking system, reliable infrastructure, predictable justice, and a readable economic environment. In Lebanon, we’ll have to sell something else. Experience, maybe. The chill. The Mediterranean with additional uncertainty.
Come and invest, but keep your money at hand
The ironic thing, of course, is that this idea comes in a country where banks are still synonymous with collective trauma. Lebanese people worked their entire lives, placed their money in supposedly secure accounts, and discovered overnight that their savings had become a suggestion. The number still exists on the screen. The bank sometimes recognizes him. But money went on a long spiritual retreat of which no one knows the date of return.
In this context, asking a foreign investor to come with $500,000 is bold. Very daring. It will simply have to be made clear from the airport that Lebanon is a country where one can enter with a suitcase full of currencies and come out with an excellent lesson in philosophy: what is the property? What is a deposit? What is a banking promise? And above all, what is a state when it looks at all this and explains that we still have to discuss it?
We must not caricature: attracting capital is necessary. Lebanon needs investment. He needs currency, activity, jobs, projects, trust. But trust does not appear on a brochure. She doesn’t give herself a visa. It does not sell at $500,000 as a premium option on an administrative passport.
Gold visa in a country under military pressure
The other detail, obviously tiny, is that the country is at war. South Lebanon still lives at the pace of strikes, drones, destroyed villages, displaced families, Israeli threats and a ceasefire that is more like a nervous pause than a peace. In some areas, security remains theoretical. In others, reconstruction is still waiting. The inhabitants are not entitled to a golden visa. They have the right to patience, promises, and sometimes help that comes after the cameras.
But in the meantime, we are thinking about seducing the foreign investor. One almost imagines the scene: « Welcome to Lebanon. To your left, the sea. To your right, the mountain. To the south, an area under tension. In banks, a complicated past. In the administration, a human adventure. And for only $500,000, you can become a privileged resident
There is something deeply Lebanese in this sequence: start with the decor before the foundations. We put the plow before the sisters, the ribbons before the walls, the marketing before the reform, the facade before the house. The country has not yet given the keys to its own citizens that it is already preparing a VIP badge for those arriving with fresh cash.
Who really accepts this level of risk?
That’s where the case gets less fun. Because a serious investor first looks at the risk. It looks at political stability, the state of the banking system, territorial security, the quality of institutions, justice, guarantees, the country’s reputation, the ability to raise its money, the protection of its rights. And at this game, Lebanon doesn’t exactly go favorite.
Then who will really agree to put $500,000 in a country in a banking crisis, in a political crisis, under military pressure and with such an unpredictable administration? Perhaps some sincere lovers of Lebanon, some members of the diaspora, some courageous entrepreneurs. But there is another risk, much more embarrassing: attract not the best investors, but those who are precisely looking for grey areas.
Because the most comfortable profiles in unstable environments are not always the most recommendable. A poorly framed golden visa can become a gateway for questionable capital, the recycling of dirty money, trafficking networks, opaque fortunes, or even individuals seeking a base of withdrawal in a country where the state controls poorly, checks slowly and rarely punishes. This is not an exotic hypothesis. It is a classic risk of this type of arrangement when it is not accompanied by a serious verification of the origin of funds, actual beneficiaries, the criminal record, political or security ties, and the financial channels used.
In a normal country, this is called compliance. In Lebanon, this is often called a formality that will be discovered when the scandal breaks out.
The danger is simple: if you want to sell a residence at any price, you can eventually attract those nobody wants anywhere else. Own investors want guarantees. Suspicious investors like faults. They like tired systems, bypassable administrations, weak banks, chatter brokers, blurred controls and states that need so much dollars that they avoid asking too many questions.
A good idea, but on the wrong floor
The golden visa is not an aberration in itself. Several countries have done so. Some with success, others with drifts. Lebanon could theoretically benefit from this, especially if the scheme were framed, transparent, linked to productive investment, job creation, regulated real estate, the real economy, and not just a communication operation.
But the problem is elsewhere. Lebanon wants to sell a residence before it has restored the state. He wants to attract capital before he settles the bank bankruptcy. He wants to offer an administrative privilege to foreigners while his own citizens still have to fight to recover their deposits, obtain a minimum public service or simply live without fear of the next military escalation.
Yet the country has real assets. No one can deny it. It has a powerful diaspora, strong entrepreneurs, a living culture, an almost insolent rebound capacity, a human attraction that even collapse has not completely destroyed. But these assets are exhausted by a system that always wants to skip the painful stage: reform.
So yes, let’s bring in the investors. But let’s start by telling them the truth. They are told that Lebanon is magnificent, brilliant, endearing, sometimes irresistible, but that it remains administered as if improvisation was a doctrine of state. Let them be told that here, resilience is a wealth, but also a trap: it allows the country to survive everything, so its leaders will not change anything.
And most importantly, that we don’t turn the need for currency into open doors for suspicious capital. Lebanon has already paid enough for arrangements, shadow zones and false good ideas sold as miracle solutions.
If we really want to create a golden visa, we also invent a visa for the Lebanese who stayed. Those who have lost their economies, those who have rebuilt without help, those who have seen their villages destroyed, those who pay in dollars for a state that renders them services in monkey currency. These would deserve at least one national loyalty card: ten crises suffered, a reform offered.
Meanwhile, the golden visa looks like a very Lebanese scene: the front door is painted while the kitchen is burning. And it is hoped that an investor, dazzled by color, will not ask too quickly the question that is bad:
