Media reports from the Caribbean have noted that a Chinese national who holds a CIP passport issued by Saint Lucia, and who was convicted of money laundering in Singapore's recent massive money laundering scandal, has had his citizenship and passport revoked. JUNJIE SU a/k/a HAIJIN SU, was sentenced to 14 months imprisonment in Singapore. While we were aware that some of the laundrymen in the case had used Saint Kitts & Nevis CBI passports, this is the first time we have learned that any of the defendants in the Singapore case employed St. Lucia passports as identification documents in the three billion dollar case.
Requests by local St. Lucia media for the Government to identify the specific investments that Su was involved in were denied by Deputy Prime Minister ERNEST HILAIRE, who is also the Minister for Investment. In his public statement, Hilaire said:
"We do not believe that private, confidential COMMERCIAL INFORMATION should be released to the public, and certainly not without the permission of the investor."
Clearly, whatever privacy rights Su might have had were extinguished when he was convicted of money laundering, giving Saint Lucia authorities the right to revoke his citizenship. Also, there is absolutely no "commercial privilege" against disclosure, in a transaction with a government agency. Hilaire has often sought to conceal the truth by claiming that any entity selling CIP has some privacy rights, which is without any basis in the law. The so-called commercial privilege was invented by Hilaire to hide rampant corruption in the CIP program, which he supervises and oversees.There have been a number of calls to the country's Prime Minister, PHILIP PIERRE, for his immediate resignation.