Sorry, I've been very busy, no time for this great forum.
@ih8socialism
Owning a significant part of shares in a company in your home country as an expat can indeed lead to trouble (=additional tax) in some cases. But I think it often depends on how many other ties you have, how long you've been gone and so on.
I don't think Bahrain has signed a lot of tax treaties. They may even be on some black lists, so you'd be looking at significant WHT in many cases. And some investors may not like a tax haven company in the structure, even with substance.
What I meant was owning shares in a holding company from another EU country. I didn't check, but maybe something like a holding company from Austria or some other reputable country. You could own the shares in the Austrian company as an individual and your structure would look very normal and boring.
After you have sold your startup, you sell the Austrian holding company to your Bahraini holding company - this should not trigger tax in Austria (again, I didn't check the rules for Austria, it's just an example). Then you should be able to send the money from the Austrian company to the Bahraini company without paying WHT, or at least much less than if you were sending it to yourself as an individual.
You would have to do some more research (look at WHT tables), which country would be a good fit for this, Austria might not be so good.
But of course, economic substance is important. If you use a holding company that's essentially just a shell company, the tax authorities may not accept it. But then again, the risk of them challenging your structure is probably much less if you use a holding company from a high tax country like Austria.
If you want to use a holding company from the Middle East, a UAE company would probably be better than a Bahraini company because the UAE has signed lots of tax treaties at least. But I don't know if that would be an option for you.
Just trying to give you some additional ideas. And of course you'd have to discuss everything with your lawyers. Keep us posted how this goes.