Risk and compliance
Bona fides certification
Also called bona fides, bona fides attestation.
Bona fides certification is the integrity screen at 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(H) that bars whole categories of person from being involved with a regional center, new commercial enterprise or job-creating entity, together with the attestation each such person files on Form I-956H so USCIS can run background and criminal record checks against it.
What it decides
The bar catches a criminal or civil offence involving fraud or deceit in the previous 10 years, a civil fraud or deceit offence that produced liability over $1,000,000 whenever it happened, a conviction carrying a sentence of more than one year, a live final order of the SEC, the CFTC, a self regulatory organisation the SEC recognises, a state securities, banking or insurance regulator, a federal banking agency or the NCUA, any involvement in illicit trafficking, espionage, money laundering, terrorist activity, human trafficking or breach of foreign asset controls, and, in the previous 10 years, public discipline by a state bar for fraud or deceit or inclusion on the Department of Justice list of currently disciplined practitioners. A person involved with a regional center must in addition be a United States national or a lawful permanent resident and not in rescission or removal proceedings. Form I-956H goes in as a distinct filing alongside Form I-956 or Form I-956F, never as an exhibit, and it carries no fee. Once USCIS notifies the entity that someone is barred, the entity has 30 days to act before it is deemed to know; knowledge acquired any other way starts a 14 day clock, and failing either can suspend or terminate the designation.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into bona fides certification rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- Form I-956HForm I-956H, Bona Fides of Persons Involved with Regional Center Program, is the background attestation that each person involved with a regional center, a new commercial enterprise or an affiliated job-creating entity must complete and file as a distinct submission alongside Form I-956 or Form I-956F.
- Regional centerA regional center is an economic unit, public or private, that USCIS has designated to sponsor pooled EB-5 investment within a defined, contiguous and limited geographic area, and it is the only route on which a petition may count indirect and induced jobs.
- Affiliated job-creating entityA job-creating entity in the regional center program that is controlled, managed or owned by any of the people involved with the regional center or the new commercial enterprise, those people being the ones who hold substantive authority, directly or indirectly, over the investors' money.
- Persons involved with a regional centerA person involved with a regional center, a new commercial enterprise or an affiliated job-creating entity is anyone who holds substantive authority, directly or indirectly, over the pooling, investment, release or use of EB-5 money, and 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5)(H) makes that definition decide whose record can disqualify the whole project.
- CertifierA certifier is the person in a position of substantive authority for the management or operations of a regional center, new commercial enterprise, affiliated job-creating entity or issuer of securities, such as its principal executive officer or principal financial officer, who knows its EB-5 compliance policies and signs the certifications the statute requires.
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