Investors will only have to remain in New Zealand for 21 days over three years to gain residency under changes to the so-called ‘golden visa’ to attract wealthy investors to New Zealand, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford says.
From 1 April, the Active Investor Plus visa will be replaced with two, simplified investment categories.
The first, the ‘Growth’ category, will focus on higher-risk investments, including direct investments in New Zealand businesses.
It will require a minimum investment of $5 million for a minimum period of three years.
The second, the ‘Balanced’ category, will focus on mixed investments, with the ability to choose ones that are lower risk.
There will be a minimum investment of $10 million over five years.
Basically his application was backed by a bunch of other rich NZ’ers who he invested in, and obviously his net worth and connections played a part. Department of Internal Affairs officials recommended his application be approved to the Internal Affairs Minister. Just the typical rich people things.
It’s worth noting that public servants serve the government. While they may have fallen back on “Department of Internal Affairs officials recommended his application be approved”, some (past or present) government or minister was almost certainly involved in setting the policy that lead to this recommendation to approve. It’s not so much “we think this should be approved” as it is “based on the guidelines you’ve given us, it sounds like this application matches”.
Reading more into it, it definitely seems like he was throwing money around and courting ministers before he applied.
NZ Herald actually has a good in depth article on it: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-got-new-zealand-citizenship/. It’s a fairly long read.