Why settle for two weeks in Bognor Regis when you could have a lifetime on the dazzling beaches of Antigua? Just $132,500 buys you citizenship to the Caribbean island along with visa-free access to its 365 beaches — and more alluring still to 165 countries from the UK to China and even Vatican City.

Hence the appeal of so-called golden visas that grant the owner, for a fee, a new passport and an ability to put a girdle around the globe as many times as they wish. The rich are big fans: 36 per cent of the ultra wealthy surveyed by Knight Frank have a second passport or dual nationality, with Russians leading the pack.  But the practice is coming under increasing scrutiny. Unscrupulous types see the visas as a way to launder money and dodge tax. Among the jurisdictions feeling the heat is Cyprus, which granted one such passport to Jho Low — a man whose alleged fraudulent shenanigans in Malaysia are so colourful a movie is in the works.

Golden visas are big business with an ever so slightly seedy underside. They were the gateway for some 6,000 new citizens and 100,000 residents to enter the EU in the decade to 2018, estimates Transparency International, bringing in investment of around €25bn. But the donor benefits do not always pan out. A bonds-for-residency scheme blew an estimated €192m hole in Hungary’s state budget. It was suspended amid allegations of corruption. Nor do they always benefit the wider economy. Foreign investment in real estate, a favoured way of investing in countries for which visas are sought, has put buying a home out of reach for ordinary people in parts of Portugal and Malta.