Consulting Plus Immigration: reviews & investigation
A Moscow-based agency selling Spanish and Portuguese residency permits with a "30-day" promise. The Estonian company that signs your contract hasn't filed a financial report in four years. And that 30% deposit you pay upfront? Multiple clients say getting it back is a different story entirely.
Who is Consulting Plus Immigration and what do they do
Services: Spanish residency (Digital Nomad, No Lucrativa, Golden Visa, Startup) and Portuguese residency (D7, Digital Nomad). Supporting services include NIE/NIF registration, bank account setup, health insurance, housing search, and certified translation. They market it as a full "turnkey" service.
Primary market: Russian and Belarusian nationals relocating to Spain or Portugal. The company's Russian-language marketing is the main promotional channel.
Founded (claimed): 2012. But the first web archive snapshot of their site dates to May 28, 2013. The Estonian legal entity was registered in 2014. The Russian LLC in 2016. So "2012" is their story, and they're sticking to it.
Main office: Moscow, 4th Lesnoy Pereulok 4, office 511, BC White Stone. That building hosts a Regus coworking floor, which is where office 511 sits.
Also listed: St. Petersburg (ul. Bolshaya Raznochinaya 16; Ligovsky pr. 43-45B), Lisbon (Rua Castilho 39-110), and London (128 City Road). The Lisbon and London offices weren't independently confirmed in this investigation.
Phone: +7 (495) 927-69-86
Email: [email protected]
Pricing: From approximately €5,300 to €7,800 per applicant, based on public client accounts. Not published on their website. One family of five paid close to 1,200,000 rubles total.
Key fact: The contract you sign is with an Estonian entity that hasn't filed financial statements since 2020 and carries unpaid court registry fines. Any legal dispute goes to Estonian courts, not Russian arbitration. Most clients discover this only after problems arise.
Trust Score
Based on 1/5 from verified data points across six review platforms and three business registries
So are they legit or not?
That question deserves a direct answer. Consulting Plus Immigration is not a vanishing-act scam. Real offices operate. Real clients have received Spanish and Portuguese residency cards through them. The positive reviews on Yandex Maps (5.0 from 104 ratings in Moscow, 5.0 from 71 in St. Petersburg), 2GIS (5.0 from 130 ratings), and Flamp (110 reviews) aren't all fake.
But the structural problems are real, and they matter a lot when things go wrong. The company markets "residency in 30 days" across their sites. Real clients consistently describe timelines of 4 to 6 months for Spain and 2 to 3 months for Portugal. The company's own content on VC.ru claims "98% approval rate" and "3,300+ cases handled." Those numbers come from their own marketing. No third party verifies them. And Yandex Maps, the largest independent review pool, shows a few dozen reviews, not thousands.
The deeper concern is what happens on the corporate level. Three legal entities spread across Russia, Estonia, and the UK. The one you actually sign with (the Estonian OÜ) hasn't filed a financial report in four years and has accumulated fines from the Estonian registry. The Russian subsidiary lists one employee officially. The UK company was registered in August 2023 at a London virtual address. If something goes wrong, you're fighting Estonian commercial courts from Moscow. That's a real barrier most clients don't consider until after signing.
The "working through licensed lawyers" model is also worth understanding. Consulting Plus connects you with Spanish or Portuguese attorneys (which isn't wrong in itself), but at a large markup. Several review platforms call the company an "aggregator." That word fits. You're paying a premium intermediary, not a firm that directly holds your case's legal liability.
Who is actually behind Consulting Plus Immigration: checking the paperwork
Estonian entity (the one signing your contract)
CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION OÜ, registration number 12731938, active status. Registered on October 7, 2014. Before December 6, 2018, this entity operated as nITgroup OÜ, so it wasn't always an immigration company. Current owner (100%) and board member: Nina Franchuk, who took control in 2019. Founder Alexander Nesterenko no longer appears in the registry.
The serious problem: this entity has not filed annual financial reports for 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024. Estonian law requires these filings. Missing four straight years generates automatic fines from the court registry department, and this entity has those fines. Estonian Inforegister places it in "zero enterprise" status. A company claiming to have handled 3,300+ immigration cases shows zero financial activity to its home regulator. That's a contradiction worth noting before you wire money.
Russian entity
OOO "BIZNES-EMIGRATSIYA" (Business Emigration LLC), taxpayer number INN 7838058756, registered September 9, 2016. Founder: Roman Uvarov. Director: Semyon Salnikov. Official headcount: 1 employee. An earlier Moscow entity called "Consulting Plus" LLC was liquidated before this one was formed.
UK entity
CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION LTD, company number 15081375, registered August 18, 2023. Director: Marianna Karpicka. Address: 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, a standard UK virtual office address used by thousands of companies. This entity is less than three years old, and its role in the service chain isn't publicly explained anywhere on the company's websites.
Domain history
The consultingplus.ru domain's earliest known web archive snapshot is dated May 28, 2013. Full WHOIS data is accessible via the standard WHOIS lookup. The spain.immigracija.eu domain uses an EU extension that carries no geographic residency requirement. Visiting that site doesn't put you in contact with a Spanish-registered business.
The company also operates consultingplus24.ru (a near-identical clone), immigracija.eu, and portugal.immigracija.eu. Multiple domains with near-identical content is a common tactic for dominating search results. It also means accountability is spread across a web of properties, which makes it harder to track what's said where.
Consulting Plus Immigration risk analysis: 5 things to know
| Area | Risk | What we found | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | high | Fees reportedly run from €5,300 to €7,800 per applicant. No price list published on the website. Multiple independent reviews describe costs as "higher than the market average." A family of five paid close to 1,200,000 rubles total according to one detailed client account. | Expect a significant premium over hiring a licensed local Spanish or Portuguese lawyer directly. Get a full written breakdown, including government fees, translation, insurance, and any consulate appointment costs, before agreeing to anything. |
| Contract | high | Signed with Estonian entity CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION OÜ, which has four years of missing financial filings and unpaid court registry fines. Client reviews on otzovik.com describe contract language as vague, particularly around refund obligations. "Information consulting services" clauses reportedly limit the company's liability. | Disputes fall under Estonian commercial law. Have an independent lawyer review the contract before signing. Ask specifically what the company's liability is if your application is denied. If the contract says "consulting services" rather than "immigration services," that distinction will matter in court. |
| Timelines | high | Marketing materials claim "residency in 30 days." Real client accounts describe 4 to 6 months for Spain (Digital Nomad, No Lucrativa) and 2 to 3 months for Portugal D7. Some cases stretched past 6 months. Consulate appointment backlogs partly explain this, but the 30-day claim has no basis in any client account found during this investigation. | Plan for 4 to 6 months minimum for Spain and 2 to 4 months for Portugal. Request written milestones from the company. If they won't commit to a realistic timeline in writing, the 30-day promise is a marketing line, not a commitment. |
| Risks | high | No migration-specific licenses found in Estonian, Russian, or UK registries. All casework runs through power-of-attorney arrangements with third-party Spanish and Portuguese lawyers. One review platform describes the company as a high-markup "aggregator." Tax advice from the company reportedly contradicted Spanish startup law (Ley de Startups) in at least one documented client complaint. | The licensed professional handling your case is a third-party lawyer, not a Consulting Plus employee. You won't know who that is without asking directly. Request their full name and bar registration number (Numero de Colegiado) and verify it on the official Spanish or Portuguese bar association website before paying. |
| Refunds | high | Clients on otzovik.com and otzyvy-migrant.ru report that the roughly 30% upfront deposit is effectively non-refundable in practice. After a No Lucrativa denial, one client was told that appeal assistance is "a separate service" not covered by the original fee. Payment is structured in three stages, which means you're financially committed before you see results. | Assume the deposit is gone unless the contract explicitly states otherwise, with a specific refund amount and timeline. If the company refuses to add clear written refund terms for denial scenarios, that tells you everything you need to know about their confidence in the process. |
What the reviews actually say (and what they leave out)
Yandex Maps shows 5.0 from 104 ratings in Moscow and 5.0 from 71 in St. Petersburg. 2GIS shows 5.0 from 130 ratings. Flamp has 110 mostly five-star reviews. A perfect or near-perfect rating across every platform for a company doing complex cross-border immigration work is, statistically, unusual. Most companies that do real work at real scale collect at least some unhappy clients.
Reading the critical reviews in detail reveals a consistent pattern. On otzovik.com, clients describe contract wording that doesn't guarantee refunds, just "consulting services." On otzyvy-migrant.ru, one client explains how the company declined to assist with an appeal after a No Lucrativa denial, citing it as a "separate service." On Zoon.ru, a client reports that the company's tax planning advice contradicted current Spanish startup law. On Google Maps, a client describes a document package that went out missing an apostille-certified criminal record check, costing weeks of delay.
None of these complaints amount to fraud. But the pattern points to a company that performs well when cases go smoothly and becomes difficult to reach when they don't. The contract structure supports the company, not you.
Consulting Plus Immigration: red flags and green lights
| ✅ | Active legal entities in three countries. Estonian OÜ active since 2014, Russian LLC since 2016, UK Ltd since 2023. All entities are searchable in their respective official registries with named directors and registration numbers. |
| ✅ | Leadership is publicly named and verifiable. Nina Franchuk (Estonia, 100% owner since 2019), Roman Uvarov and Semyon Salnikov (Russia), Marianna Karpicka (UK), and Petr Samoylov (public-facing legal department head) are all identifiable people. The company isn't hiding behind anonymous ownership. |
| ✅ | No court judgments or criminal complaints in public records. Searches across Russian court databases, Estonian commercial registries, and UK court records returned nothing. No regulatory warnings from Spain's CNMV, Portugal's CMVM, or Russia's Central Bank were found. |
| ✅ | Not listed in any scam database. Checks against baxov.net, plohotron.online, moshennik.eu, telltrue.net, scamadviser.com, and loxotrona.net returned no results. The company has no history of appearing on fraud warning lists. |
| ⚠️ | Estonian entity: four consecutive years of missing financial reports. CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION OÜ has filed nothing for 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024. The Estonian court registry has issued fines. Estonian Inforegister tags it as a "zero enterprise." A company handling thousands of cases but reporting zero activity to its home registry raises a structural question that deserves an answer before you sign. |
| ⚠️ | Moscow office is a Regus coworking space. Office 511 in BC White Stone is part of a managed coworking and business services floor. The company doesn't hold a dedicated office lease there. That's common for Moscow consulting operations, but it does mean very low fixed overhead and easy exit if needed. |
| ⚠️ | Marketing numbers have no independent verification. "98% approval rate" and "3,300+ cases" appear in company-authored VC.ru content and on their own websites. No third-party audit, bar association data, or registry filing supports these figures. Yandex Maps, the largest independent pool, shows tens of reviews, not thousands. |
| ⚠️ | Multiple domains used to dominate search results. The company runs consultingplus.ru, consultingplus24.ru, immigracija.eu, spain.immigracija.eu, and portugal.immigracija.eu with near-identical content. This isn't illegal, but it makes it harder to track what's being promised on which property and who's responsible for each claim. |
| ❌ | No migration licenses in any of the three jurisdictions. None of the three legal entities holds a documented migration-specific license in Estonia, Russia, or the UK. All casework runs through power-of-attorney arrangements with third-party Spanish and Portuguese lawyers. Consulting Plus is legally a consultant, not a regulated immigration practitioner. |
| ❌ | Clients report non-refundable deposits after visa denials. Reviews on otzovik.com and otzyvy-migrant.ru describe inability to recover approximately 30% prepayment when applications were denied. Post-denial appeals are reportedly billed as a new separate service, not covered by the original fee. |
| ❌ | "30-day" claim is contradicted by every real client account found. The company's advertising says residency in 30 days. Every client account in this investigation describes timelines of 2 to 6 months depending on the program. The 30-day figure appears to have no basis in the company's actual operational reality. |
Consulting Plus Immigration vs alternatives: which makes more sense for you
The highlighted column is the company under review. best worst mixed
| Parameter | Consulting Plus Immigration ★ | Direct hire: licensed EU lawyer | DIY (self-filing) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per applicant | €5,300 to €7,800 most expensive | €1,500 to €3,500 cheaper | €80 to €500 in government fees cheapest |
| Realistic timelines | 4 to 6 months actual (marketed as 30 days) | 3 to 5 months | 4 to 8 months (learning curve adds time) |
| Contractual guarantees | Vague language, refunds disputed by clients weakest | Clearer professional liability; varies by lawyer | None |
| License status | No direct license; uses third-party lawyers | Bar-registered (Colegiado) attorney regulated | Not applicable |
| Public pricing | Not published online opaque | Typically provided in writing on request | Government fee schedules are public |
| Post-denial support | Reportedly billed as separate service | Depends on original agreement terms | Handled entirely by you |
Local EU lawyer pricing is an estimate based on Spanish and Portuguese bar association market surveys. Always get written quotes and compare before committing.
What to check before paying Consulting Plus Immigration
- Contract entity: Confirm in writing which legal entity will sign your contract. If it's CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION OÜ (Estonia), understand that any future dispute falls under Estonian law. Have your own lawyer read the contract first. This step isn't optional.
- Refund clause: Demand a specific written clause covering what happens if your application is denied. The clause should name the exact refund amount and the payment timeline. Verbal assurances don't hold up. If the company won't add this clause in writing, walk away.
- Lawyer credentials: Ask for the full name and bar registration number (Numero de Colegiado in Spain, Cedula Profissional in Portugal) of the attorney who will actually handle your case. Verify that number on the official bar association website before any payment clears.
- Written timeline: Request a document listing specific milestones with target dates. If the company gives you "30 days" verbally but won't commit to a written schedule with milestone dates, the 30-day figure is a sales tool, not a service commitment.
- Full cost itemization: Government fees, consulate appointment costs, certified translation fees, health insurance, notary costs, and any housing search fees should all appear as separate line items. "About 780,000 rubles" is not a quote.
- Appeal coverage: Ask directly: "If our application is denied, is appeal assistance included in this contract or billed separately?" Get the answer in writing. At least one client was told appeals were separate after already paying the full service fee.
- Tax advice cross-check: If you receive tax planning guidance, especially around Digital Nomad or Startup visa programs, verify it with an independent Spanish or Portuguese certified tax advisor (gestor) before acting on it. At least one documented client complaint describes advice that contradicted Spanish law.
Frequently asked questions about Consulting Plus Immigration
Is Consulting Plus Immigration a scam?
Not in the classic sense. Real offices operate in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Real clients have received Spanish and Portuguese residency cards through this company. No criminal charges or court judgments appear in public records across any of the three jurisdictions. But the structural problems are serious: no migration licenses, an Estonian contracting entity with four years of missing financial filings, and a consistent pattern of clients reporting difficulty recovering deposits after visa denials. Our investigation rates this company 1 out of 5, reflecting high structural risk rather than confirmed fraud.
How much does Consulting Plus Immigration charge for Spain or Portugal residency?
Based on public client accounts, fees run from approximately €5,300 to €7,800 per applicant for Spanish programs. A family of five reportedly spent close to 1,200,000 rubles in total. No price list appears on the company's website. Contact their team directly for a written quote, and ask for full itemization including all government fees, translation costs, and any additional services before agreeing to anything.
Which legal entity actually signs my contract?
Contracts are signed with CONSULTING PLUS IMMIGRATION OÜ, the Estonian entity registered under number 12731938. This entity has not filed annual financial reports for 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024, and carries unresolved fines from the Estonian court registry department. Any legal dispute would fall under Estonian commercial law, not the Russian arbitration system most clients assume applies.
What happens if my Spain or Portugal residency application is denied?
This is where the contract structure matters most. Multiple clients report that the roughly 30% upfront deposit is effectively non-refundable in practice, and that post-denial appeal assistance is treated as a separate billable service. Before signing, demand explicit written refund terms specifying what you get back and when if the application is denied. If the company won't add that clause, that answer tells you a great deal.
How long does the process actually take with Consulting Plus Immigration?
Their advertising says 30 days. Every real client account in this investigation describes 4 to 6 months for Spanish programs (Digital Nomad, No Lucrativa) and 2 to 3 months for Portugal D7. Some cases stretched past 6 months. Consulate appointment backlogs are partly to blame and are outside any agency's control. But the 30-day claim isn't matched by a single client account we found. Plan for at least 4 months and adjust your rental, travel, and work plans accordingly.
Does Consulting Plus Immigration hold official immigration licenses?
No migration-specific licenses were found in Estonian, Russian, or UK registries for any of the three entities. The company works through power-of-attorney arrangements with third-party Spanish and Portuguese lawyers. Always ask for the specific bar registration number of the attorney assigned to your case, then verify it on the official Spanish (Colegio de Abogados) or Portuguese (Ordem dos Advogados) bar website before any payment.
Where can I leave a review about Consulting Plus Immigration?
You can read and post reviews about Consulting Plus Immigration on proverj.com. Your first-hand account of the experience, positive or negative, helps other people make better decisions before committing thousands of euros to an immigration agency. Detailed, specific reviews (timelines, what worked, what didn't, how disputes were handled) are the most useful.
Expert verdict on Consulting Plus Immigration
I've been building immigration businesses since 2011. When I came to the US, I needed help too, and I know what it feels like to hand over a significant sum to a company you can't fully verify. That's why I take these investigations seriously.
Consulting Plus Immigration represents a type I see often in the Russian-speaking immigration space: the premium aggregator. They don't actually hold licenses. Their Spanish or Portuguese lawyers do. The agency sits in between, coordinates the process, handles client communication in Russian, and charges a large markup for that coordination. That model can work fine, and for many clients here it clearly has. But the markup is very high relative to what you'd pay hiring a local Spanish attorney directly, and the contract structure protects the agency, not you.
What concerns me most is the Estonian entity's financial reporting situation. Four missing annual filings isn't a paperwork oversight. It's a sustained choice not to report to the registry of the country where your contract is technically governed. That's the kind of detail that only matters when something goes wrong, but it matters a great deal then. If you need to take legal action, you're doing it in Estonia, in Estonian, under Estonian commercial law. Most clients relocating from Russia to Spain have no infrastructure for that fight.
On the positive side: the company has been operating for roughly a decade. The founders are named people with public identities. No criminal cases appear anywhere. Clients who had smooth processes are genuinely happy. That's not nothing.
My recommendation: if you want help navigating Spanish or Portuguese residency, use a local licensed lawyer based in Spain or Portugal directly. Budget €1,500 to €3,500 for the legal work. You'll pay less, the liability sits with a bar-registered professional, and any dispute stays within the EU legal framework where you're actually relocating. If you do choose Consulting Plus, get everything in writing before paying a single euro: refund terms, the name of your assigned lawyer, their bar registration number, and realistic written timelines. Don't accept verbal promises for a €7,000 decision.
Don't get burned
Marketing promises and real-world results are two different things. Read what actual clients say before committing €5,000 or more to an immigration agency with a complex corporate structure and disputed refund policies.
Read real reviews about Consulting Plus Immigration