Your Majesty,
My name is Max Katz, I am from Russia. I visited the UK 4 times, and were absolutely delighted. In April 2009 I and my friend (Evgeny Serebryakov) have applied for UK visa. In my application I wrote, that I work in T*** LLC company and my income from it is 90,000 RUR per mounts. During a phone check by the embassy, employee of T*** answered, and said that my salary is 30,000 RUR. The embassy decided that I provided false information, and banned me and Evgeny for 10 years from visits to the UK. T*** LLC and Katz, Katz and Yegorov LLC are both our companies, owned by my grandfather, my father and me. These two companies are managed by me. When I wrote in my application “income 90,000 RUR” I meant all the income, including dividends, premiums etc. During the phone check, the employee of the embassy asked my father directly “what is the official salary as an general manager of T***” and the answer was 30,000 RUR. But there is absolutely no way to say all those arguments, no one from the embassy or other British government representative do not agree for a meeting. I am traveling around the world for the last 4 years. I am a poker player, first Russian champion on Sport Poker, and I am visiting a lot of tournaments abroad. In the last few years I visited: · Estonia (Nov 2006) · France (Dec 2006) · UK (Jun 2007) · USA (Jun 2007) · UK (Sep 2007) · UK (Oct 2007) · USA (Nov 2007) · France (April 2008) · Latvia (April 2008) · USA (Jun 2008) · UK (Sep 2008) · Monaco (Sep 2008) · Latvia (Mar 2009) · Ireland (April 2009) · USA (April 2009) · USA (Jun 2009) · Switzerland, Italy and France (Sep 2009) · Poland (Dec 2009) · USA (Feb 2010) · Germany, France (Mar 2010) This is the visas that were issued for me in the last 3 years: · Estonia (01.11.2006) · France (23.11.2006) · UK (05.06.2007, UK254006J) · USA (18.6.2007) · UK (22.9.2008, 005182899) · Litva, Schengen (2.4.2008) · USA (11.6.2008) · Latvia (24.3.2009) · Ireland (09.4.2009) · France (31.8.2009) · Poland (2.12.2009) · France (19.1.2010) I made 20 trips to foreign countries, European or USA, 4 of them to the UK, and 12 visas was issued to me. Never on this had trips I broke any emigration or any other law in foreign country, as well as I never broken laws in Russia. The British visa authorities have the absolute power to convict me and decide that I can’t enter, they acts like they are machines, there is no way to speak with human personally or see someone. I can’t go to court or something else: because of mistake the employee made I can’t visit London. I want to travel to the UK, London is my favorite city in the world after Moscow, plenty of poker tournaments in the UK including the WSOP Europe that I want to visit, and I want to learn to speak English like the Britons. I have absolutely no intent to stay in Britain, or in any other country that I am visiting, I just traveling to see the world and play poker. I would like to ask for your advice: what to do in this situation? Thank you in advance, Max Katz, shtab@mail.ru, |