ISA CYRIL, BOARD SECRETARY AND LEGAL COUNSEL TO ST.LUCIA'S CIP UNIT, RESIGNS HER POSITIONS

ISA CYRIL, who now serves as Lead Counsel for the country's beleaguered CIP Unit, and is also Secretary of its Board of Directors, resigned her position today, after both local and foreign media approached her for comment on recent events regarding the CIP vendor CARIBBEAN GALAXY REAL ESTATE LIMITED scandal. She sits on Board meetings together with McClaude Emmanuel and Christopher Paul. We applaud her action; it is expected that there will be other resignations in short order, as the CIP unit has stonewalled all requests made by the people for full disclosure in the Galaxy scandal.

The Board, led by Lorne Theophilus and McClaude Emmanuel, was responsible for approving the real estate contract with Caribbean Galaxy, while Deputy Prime Minister Hilaire signed the Infrastructure Fund contract. Galaxy collected over Two Billion Dollars (USD$2bn); None of the funds have been accounted for by the CIP program. Those fraudulent payments, which transited correspondent accounts in American banks, could be considered predicate acts for criminal money laundering charges in the U.S. Whether any of the American banks what accepted billions in what might ultimately be considered the Proceeds of Crime  remains an open question. 

We await further information on the expected resignation of a number of other Board members, whose contingent liability has become an issue, given the recent disclosures of information indicating possible Board misconduct.

IN THE AFTERMATH OF A SUCCESSFUL TWO BILLION DOLLAR MONEY LAUNDERING OPERATION, SINGAPORE'S ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING UNIT REMINDS THE COUNTRY'S FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS ABOUT SOURCE OF WEALTH BASICS

After enduring what has now become a global scandal, Singapore finds itself in repair mode, as its competitors in the offshore arena are most certainly taking advantage of its abject failure to detect, and interdict, the massive Chinese money laundering operation whilst it was in progress. How much international financial business it loses we cannot say, but we do note an important new step the government has taken to mitigate future money laundering schemes.

We have previously reported on increased attention being paid to the improper acceptance of passports from low-risk jurisdictions, after Singapore's compliance officers freely accepted fraudulent St. Kitts CBI passports as identity from Chinese nationals, who reportedly did not speak any English whatsoever, in a clear case of compliance malpractice. Readers who are not familiar with the dangers that such passports present are urged to read our prior articles regarding the subject. as well as the American litigation in progress.

The country's Money Laundering Department, part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, has released to its banks a detailed Circular explaining the basics of Source of Wealth. Frankly, there should not be any need to explain to the financial institutions the nuts & bolts of SOW due diligence, but it is welcomed nevertheless. Let us hope that there will be no further invasion of the country's financial structure by money launderers for Chinese illegal gaming entities, proffering passports known to be suspect, due to the circumstances surrounding their illegal acquisition, and containing aliases. Any compliance officer who now unquestionably accepts St. Kitts passports should be terminated for malpractice.

Our thanks to Linkedin member Ajay Shamdasani for bringing the matter to our attention.

POST-HURRICANDE BERYL, LOOK FOR ANOTHER PERFECT STORM TO ARRIVE; EXPECT MONEY LAUNDERING THROUGH CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT EXPLOITING THIS NEW TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY

Money launderers are constantly scanning global news, seeking to exploit unfolding events; they regard the world as a financial battlefield, in which they can choose to enter and attack specific vulnerabilities that appear, and Acts of God (natural disasters) often present them with time-sensitive opportunities. I have previously written about how laundrymen set up bogus charities and NGOs, to serve as cover for transnational movement of the Proceeds of Crime, under cover of armed conflict, natural disaster, public health nightmare, and any number of emergencies where effective compliance takes a backseat to saving lives and property.

Hurricane Beryl, which destroyed a substantial number of structures in Grenada and the Grenadines, offers an emerging Target of Opportunity, to borrow a military term. Grenada's CBI program,already tainted with both intentionally uncompleted construction projects that allowed Stakeholders (and the Government) to take lucrative fees, so long as the applicants received the passports which could qualify them later to enter the united States, will be flooded with new money, upon which, trust me, due diligence efforts will be cosmetic only, and not effective. Public pressure within Grenada for construction projects will fuel the easy entry of dodgy capital. Expect sanctioned Russian funding to find a circuitous way to gain entry; Russian CBI investors have been attracted to Grenada for many years, and don't expect that they will let such a small thing as international sanctions to stand in their way. The E-2 treaty Investor Visa for the United States for Grenada citizens says it all.

The East Caribbean CBI citizenship & passport industry, now under attack for corruption, fraud and money laundering in two other EC states, continues, in its many different Caribbean iterations, to provide fertile ground for professional money launderers seeking to place their clients' money where it disappears into the local economy, and is not under threat of seizure and forfeiture, as it is in a convenient (and corrupt) jurisdiction.

COMPLIANCE OFFICERS, REMEMBER THAT THE THREATS FROM CHINESE CAREER CRIMINALS WIELDING CARIBBEAN CBI PASSPORTS ALSO COME FROM ST. LUCIA

While the media focuses upon the scandal surrounding the issuance of thousands of St. Kitts CBI passports, through Caribbean Galaxy, the Chinese company alleged to have knowingly accepted bogus identification from Chinese nationals, some of whom have already been arrested in the US, UK, Singapore and elsewhere, a good compliance officer instinctively knows that money launderers generally carry multiple forms of valid identification while engaged in international travel, to disrupt any possible subsequent criminal investigation, and to eliminate the establishment of a pattern which a sharp compliance officer might tumble to, during a due diligence query. When I was engaged in money laundering I, like the individuals that are cleaning cash today, was careful to employ this trick routinely, to cover my tracks. It is standard operating procedure.

You can expect these same Chinese career criminals whose activities have been facilitated by their possession of those St. Kitts passports, to not only have more than one, under different aliases, but they will also have CBI passports from that other East Caribbean jurisdiction whose CIP unit has also literally been in bed with Caribbean Galaxy, the East Caribbean state of St. Lucia. If you read Caribbean news, you know that the country's Deputy Prime Minister is so afraid of his Chinese masters, that he has ignored his constituents' pleas to disclose the actual number of passports issued through Caribbean Galaxy.

Therefore, you can expect that, now that the negative global publicity about SKN CBI passports has alerted compliance officers to the criminal abuse of St. Kitts passports, all those Chinese laundrymen, sanctions violators, narcotics traffickers, intelligence agents, and other of the Usual Suspects, are trotting out their St. Lucia CBI passports during their operations; Watch for them. It's not just about St. Kitts anymore. Try to think like a money launderer if you want to catch them in the act.

THE MONEY LAUNDERERS' NEW BEST FRIEND: SWISS CBI CONSULTANCY WILL TAKE YOUR CYBER CURRENCY AND GET YOU A NEW PASSPORT

A Swiss company that sells economic citizenships is now advertising online that it will accept your Bitcoin, and then secure one of those prized Citizenship by investment (CBI/CIP) passports so necessary in these visa-obsessed times. Since all five of the East Caribbean states that offer CBI require US Dollars (USD$) for payment of those six-figure treasures, this means that the Swiss company intends to convert your soon-to-be untraceable cyber currency into Dollars. What's wrong with this picture? Are any other CBI consultancies doing this covertly?

I see nothing on the company's website about how much Due Diligence, Know your Client, Source of Funds & Source of Wealth will be done internally. I am certain that the world's active duty money launderers are just rubbing their hands together with delight, because this Swiss company will be fronting nicely for their criminal clients' dirty money.

Where are Swiss law enforcement agencies in all this? We are wondering just how many months they will take to investigate, analyze, and then shut down this obvious Laundrymans' friend, lest the Swiss reputation for facilitating money laundering be further tarnished by this very obvious effort to defeat anti-money laundering efforts of the world's financial institutions.

It is curious that, precisely at a time when American financial institutions that bank CBI deposits for those same five East Caribbean CBI-selling countries have come under the microscope for allowing dodgy money to pass through their portals, and a U.S. District Court in Florida has approved the service of subpoenas against three of the largest ones. See IN RE APPLICATION FOR AUTHORIZATION TO CONDUCT DISCOVERY FOR USE IN FOREIGN PROCEEDINGS, PURSUANT TO 28 U.S.C. §1782, Case No.: 24-CV-20492-RKA ( S.D. FL). Every compliance officer at American financial institutions that offer correspondent accounts needs to read that Order today and share it with bank cousel.

FEDERAL JUDGE GRANT'S MSR'S DISCOVERY APPLICATION, GIVING IT ACCESS TO CORRESPONDENT ACCOUNTS AT THREE U.S. BANKS OF PAYMENTS IMPLICATING CARIBBEAN GALAXY AND FORMER ST. KITTS PRIME MINISTER HARRIS IN BILLION DOLLAR FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING SCANDAL

A United States Magistrate Judge in Florida has granted a §1782 Discovery Application, filed by MSR MEDIA, which allows subpoenas to issue for bank records at three major American banks which maintain correspondent accounts where Citizenship by Investment passport applicants' payments from St. Kitts CIP program are deposited.

The Court, in a twelve page Opinion containing an extensive discussion of the issues and the applicable law, granted the Application over the objection of Chinese-owned passport vendor CARIBBEAN GALAXY REAL ESTATE LIMITED, Chinese national YING JIN, and former St.Kitts Prime Minister TIMOTHY HARRIS, rejecting their legal arguments, and ordering the issuance of subpoenas against BANK OF AMERICA, WELLS FARGO and JP MORGAN CHASE, which MSR requested as evidence needed to defend itself in two Defamation cases currently pending against it in St. Kitts. MSR had publicly exposed rampant fraud and corruption in the St. Kitts CBI program, and named the parties allegedly responsible, which was followed by the Defamation actions filed there, by those same parties.

MSR, together with plaintiff PHILIPPE MARTINEZ, have filed a $150m civil RICO action in Federal Court for the Middle District of Florida, against the same individuals and corporate entity; The Order recited that, under Federal law, those plaintiffs were not precluded from using the evidence obtained by the subpoenas in other civil litigation in the United States.

The impact of this Order, which will compel American banks whose correspondent accounts that accept and transmit CBI payments alleged to be illegal under applicable law, and are reportedly part of an ongoing billion dollar fraud and money laundering enterprise, could drive US banks to close correspondent accounts for the five East Caribbean states that sell CBI citizenships, due to American laws on money laundering. Whether there is any civil liability on the part of the banks listed in the subpoena is not known.

This decision, which occurred today, represents a major setback for Timothy Harris and Caribbean Galaxy. Inasmuch as all three proceedings, the SKN defamation, MSR MEDIA vs. LES KHAN, which is the RICO case, and this §1782 Discovery Application, are all related to the CBI scandal, we shall be reporting on all developments in all of them, as they occur.

THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE HOLDER OF AN ILLEGAL ST. KITTS CBI PASSPORT IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK

If you are a compliance officer involved in Customer Identification Procedures, who has been presented with a passport from the Caribbean nation known as the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis, more commonly known as St. Kitts, and you are concerned that the ethnic Chinese using it as identification might be holding one of those illegal CBI passports sold by Caribbean Galaxy in China, and which used forged or bogus ID to create it, meaning it shows a definite alias, and not the individual's true name, do not fear.

There are only a couple of hundred Chinese who are locally-born and raised Kittitians, and they can be identified by (1) Their definite Caribbean-accented English, which has that characteristic lilt that is easily recognizable. and (2) the individual can also speak in St. Kitts Creole, the local dialect spoken by native-born Kittitians. Do NOT accept anyone who is speaking with a British accent, which indicates that he or she most likely learned the language in China, or somewhere other than St. Kitts. Of course, if he doesn't speak Caribbean English, you have your answer, an decline his business.

Please note:This is not a method of profiling, or any other legally-prohibited method of prejudicial conduct towards a minority group member, but a risk-based method of insuring that you are not admitting, as gatekeeper, a Chinese white collar criminal, or individual engaged in industrial espionage, or an intelligence agent (meaning spy) engaged in activities that threaten National Security of your nation.

Given that Chinese criminals with illegal SKN CBI passports have been arrested in the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore, there is a very good chance that you will encounter one of the many thousands of identity documents sold in China to criminals. Whether you choose to confiscate that passport, if you can safely do so, is a matter for you and your legal counsel, who may contact the authorities, if he determines that a crime was committed by the presentation of fraudulent and misleading identification for the purposes of opening an account at a Federally licensed financial institution.

AN OLD CARIBBEAN HAND WATCHES CHINA COMBINE MONEY LAUNDERING AND GEOPOLITICS, AND SEES AN EMERGING THREAT FROM AMERICA'S IGNORED BACKDOOR

I have been knocking around the East Caribbean for mischief since the day I showed up in Dominica in 1979, to buy passports from a corrupt regime for American financial criminals. I later spent a decade as a career money launderer, taking full advantage of the fact that the United States, deeming the region safe from foreign influence, studiously ignored it. Where else in the world does the U.S. not have embassies and consulates in every country, no matter how small?

As we say. the chickens have a bad habit of coming home to roost; China has now embedded itself in the region, using a combination of adroit geopolitics, and artful money laundering through the penetration of all five Citizenship by Investment(CBI/CIP) economic citizenship passport sales programs.

Here are but a few of the many examples this old money launderer finds extremely troubling:
(1) Creating its own dark version of the Hong Kong enclave that was so successful for the UK, China is building a multi-million dollar colony that will be totally independent from Antigua, where it is under construction, which will feature its own passports, government, law enforcement and industry, and function separate from any influence from local indigenous laws.
(2) The two billion dollar (USD$2bn) theft, through fraud, of CBI profits, reportedly accomplished by Caribbean Galaxy, a Chinese-controlled company linked to the PRC government. All that money went straight to China.
(3) China's construction of massive embassies, in Caribbean countries that have literally zero trade with China, which have become bases of operation, and listening posts upon the United States. During the last major hurricane, over 900 Chinese nationals were evacuated from the embassy in Dominica; you cannot tell me all those people are diplomats.
(4) Bribe money for corrupt St .Lucia senior government officials was hand-delivered from Antigua by a Panamanian courier.
(5) China is building an advanced listening post inside Cuba, to more easily eavesdrop on American signals intelligence.
(6) An official from Caribbean Galaxy actually attended, as a staff member, a meeting at the United Nations of the St. Kitts delegation. This demonstrates how influential China is in the Caribbean.
(7) Chinese advisers supply armored card and advanced weapons to Dominica's camouflage-clad paramilitary police, which attack any peaceful protesters that challenge the local government's incestuous relationship with China.
(8) China's Belt & Road Initiative, which has been known to exploit poor nations that later are unable to pay those loans by forcing maritime and naval facilities on them, is all over the region, according to the Four Star General that commands SOUTHCOM, and constitutes an impending threat, according to Congressional testimony.

How will the United States respond? We will be watching.

SUIT IN ST. KITTS TO COMPEL THE GOVERNMENT TO CANCEL ILLEGAL CBI PASSPORTS MOVES FORWARD

TERRANCE DREW

While many compliance officers in the United States are closely monitoring MSR vs. LES KHAN, the Federal RICO case seeking damages against present and former government officials and Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) In St. Kitts and St. Lucia for participating in illegal CBI citizenship and passport sales programs, filed by a major stakeholder, there is another legal proceeding, which is also of significant importance to the reform of the region's Citizenship by Investment industry: an administrative proceeding to order (Mandamus) the SKN government to cancel and revoke all discounted CBI citizenships granted to CARIBBEAN GALAXY REAL ESTATE LTD., under the Prison Project. The ultimate decision of the Court will have an impact upon all five of the East Caribbean states that sell CBI products to the public, as it appears that Dominica, and the other EC jurisdictions, all allowed vendors to sell discounted citizenships, although they are prohibited b law.

The Government of St. Kitts originally sought to strike the administrative action, filed in the High Court of Justice, and styled MSR MEDIA vs. TERRANCE DREW, in his Capacity as Minister of National Security, (Case No.: SKBHCV2024/0087), but the Court declined to grant the motion, and did not dismiss the case, ruling that the issues presented would be the subject of s subsequent, substantive hearing. The court also ordered the Government to file its defenses on the merits, by 12 August, 2024.

The Petitioner MSR is reportedly in possession of 190 CBI applications for citizenship, wherein an illegally discounted rate was paid, of which 64 are said to have been processed during Prime Minister Drew's term in office. PM Drew has denied that any such illegal applications were filed during his tenure as PM. Just how many citizenships under the legal price did Prime Minister Drew approve?

The Court has scheduled the next hearing in the case for october 25, 2024, during which time it indicated that other relevant matters may be heard, and a firm trial date set. Given the importance of this matter, we will be asking senior Government officials for their official position, and comments, on the case and report back to our readers forthwith; stay tuned.