Dropping US citizenship was about investing, says Facebook co-founder

ISTANBUL

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The real motive behind his decision to renounce his United States citizenship was investment flexibility, said Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin according to the Wall Street Journal.
 
It wasn’t U.S. tax policies that forced the wealthy innovator out of his U.S. citizenship, Saverin's spokesman Tom Goodman told WSJ, but rather the strict investing limitations the U.S. applies to its citizens.
 
“U.S. citizens are severely restricted as to what they can invest in and where they can maintain accounts,” Goodman said. “Many foreign funds and banks won’t accept Americans. This was a financial rather than a tax motive.”
 
Goodman also stressed that the decision "had nothing to do with dissatisfaction," but was a mere arrangement to ease his way of doing business in Singapore, where Saverin had been living for some time now.
 
Saverin, together with the now 28-year-old Marck Zuckerberg, was one-half of the brains behind Facebook, until the business relationship went down in flames, resulting in a legal battle that turned the once good friends into courtroom enemies. The lawsuit ended with a ruling in Zuckerberg's favor, and Saverin's share in Facebook was reduced to two to four percent.
 
Even with his downsized stake in Facebook, Saverin's shares are worth a total of $3.4 billion.
 
The courtroom battle entered popular lore when Facebook's nuclear rise to web stardom was depicted  in 2010's Golden Globe-winnning film "The Social Network." The blockbuster hit told the story of Saverin and Zuckerbeg, with Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Zuckerberg earning him an Oscar nomination for best actor.