CRIMINAL ORGANISATION USED ST. KITTS DIPLOMATIC PASSPORTS FOR HUMAN SMUGGLING INTO THE EU

 

A sophisticated organized crime human trafficking operation that employed diplomatic passports of St. Kitts & Nevis to bring their Iraqi clients into the European Union, where they then claimed asylum, was broken up by the law enforcement agencies EUROPOL and EUROJUST, which made arrests of the participants. The scheme, which involved the use of private jets whose stated destination was the Caribbean, but which then made stops within the EU, where the illegal migrants identified themselves to authorities as Iraqi and Kurdish nationals, and then applied for asylum,  reportedly charged each client €10,000. The individuals were not bona fide diplomats. 

There were reportedly five separate documented landings with illegal migrants using as SKN diplomats. in Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Belgium. A total of three arrests have been made, and two individuals remain art large. Two private jets, valued at more than €400,000, were seized in Belgium by police, in conjunction with arrest warrants. 

The illicit sale of diplomatic passports by the five countries in the East Caribbean states that participate in Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passport programmes has plagued the financial world for some time, as  financial criminals and money launderers employ those valuable documents to facilitate transnational crime, often with impunity.  Corrupt local government officials in St. Kitts, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia and Grenada allegedly sell them the diplomatic passports for cash, generally in US Dollars.