CEO of Latvian group investing €200 million in Portugal also has visa renewal problems with AIMA
The CEO of Latvian Group Loom, a company that has €200 million to invest in Portugal, has been facing similar kinds of bureaucratic hurdles faced by the US tech company Cloudflare.
The e-commerce holding company decided to move its HQ to Portugal two years ago, but the move has been hampered by Portugal’s red tape, with dozens of employees unable to get their authorisations for residency documents stamped, including that of its CEO Ilya Shirikov who originally hailed from Moscow.
“Residence permits are a nightmare. At first, we had many problems, then they were solved, but now we see that these problems have returned. The people we brought in received their residence permits for two years and now need to renew them, but it is impossible to get a lot of staff’s visas processed at the immigration office (AIMA). We already have 50 people with expired residence permits and few have had appointments (to renew),” said the founder and CEO of Joom, in an interview with online business daily ECO.
Ilya Shirokov reveals that one of his workers had a slot to renew his visa – which has since expired – for January 2026. In the meantime “he can’t travel or go to his family, so it’s very difficult to bring in new people. If we want to build something big, we need to bring in the best people, wherever they are,” says the leader of the Latvian group.
When asked if he agreed with the complaints of Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, who recently warned tech companies on X that “you’d be mad to start up a company in Portugal” because of excess red tape and the sluggishness of Portugal’s visa process, Shirokov said: ”I don’t think it’s as bad as all that, but I’m here and he’s from the States”.
When asked if he regrets having invested in Portugal, he says not, but stresses that the visas situation needs to be sorted out.
“If it’s resolved, no (I’m not sorry). For us, it is a very good place. The same reasons we came here two years ago are still valid. We hire local people and they like to be in the international community. I continue to recommend Portugal to other entrepreneurs. It is a strategic location. For my part, I always promote Portugal,” said Ilya Shirokov, hoping that there will be a swift resolution to the obstacles.
In 2023, when he decided to move Joom’s HQ from Latvia to Portugal, the group’s board weighed up 12 European cities before choosing Lisbon.
“First, we asked our employees where they wanted to live, and then we asked potential candidates where they would like to move to. Third, we looked at the cost to us as a company (how much tax we need to pay). Fourth, we looked at whether the airport was close to the city and had direct flights to the west and east,” he says.
After evaluating these four factors, the choice fell on Lisbon, but the entry process was more difficult than they had imagined because of the transition from Portugal’s previous immigration and visa office SEF to the current one, AIMA.
On a tax level, Ilya Shirokov thinks that Portugal is an attractive country, and despite changes to the Non-Habitual Residents regime (NHR), he has welcomed initiatives such as IFIC – Tax Incentive for Scientific Research and Innovation) where the majority of his qualified staff get a special 20% tax rate on their income in Portugal for 10 years.
Joom is an international e-commerce marketplace and app that connects consumers with a wide variety of products from sellers worldwide. It primarily focuses on providing an easy and enjoyable shopping experience, offering a vast selection of goods at often discounted prices. Joom also offers a data platform called JoomPulse for marketplace sellers.
