TEN CHINESE MONEY LAUNDERERS ARRESTED IN BILLION DOLLAR CASE IN SINGAPORE HAD DOMINICA AND ST. KITTS CBI PASSPORTS AS BACK-UP IN SUPPORT OF THEIR OPERATIONS

                                       

The public statements made recently by some of the five East Caribbean states that sell Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) passports, regarding their reform of the application process, appear to be no more than efforts to delay UK and EU actions to revoke visa-free entry of passport holders to their jurisdictions, if we are to regard this week's news from Singapore as evidence of compliance. Ten Chinese nationals were arrested this week in Singapore, in a billion dollar money laundering investigation, with the seizure of many millions in cash and other assets in the possession of the alleged money launderers.

What is significant is that those accused laundrymen, who all possessed legitimate passports from a number of Southeast Asia or European countries, also had what I consider to be "back-up" passports issued by St Kitts & Nevis and the Commonwealth of Dominica. Those are identity documents used by professional money launderers in their transnational operations to defeat law enforcement investigations into their global layering activities. These CBI passports, issued by the two East caribbean states, allow the holders to enter a jurisdiction under one passport and identity, and exit it using another, which usually shows them with a slightly altered, or totally different, name and background, which effectively acts to break any investigative trail being followed by law enforcement. Efforts to track a target hit a dead end, as his travels can no longer be followed. When you are a traveling laundryman, you are most exposed in the middle of your layering process, and will take any and all steps to insure that you are not apprehended with incriminating evidence; I've been there and know that this is an extremely vulnerable phase for the laundryman. They also run a risk-based operation, only it is to avoid arrest and conviction.

In other words, CBI passports are often used by money launderers as counter-surveillance, as well as making arrest during exit from a jurisdiction impossible, as any stop and detain order with border or frontier authorities does not have their now-used alias and national identity document information. Therefore, the very public moves by St. Kitts and Dominica to appear to have revised and amended their passport sales processes to reduce risk are no more than PR; they have no factual basis.

We might add that both East Caribbean CBI states have close, incestuous relationships with the Peoples' Republic of China (PRC), both on a diplomatic and political level, and Chinese, and even North Korean, nationals have a long history of buying Citizenship by Investment passports with impunity Note that the UK recently revoked visa-free access to all Dominica passport holders, due to the unacceptable risk level posed by those travel documents. 

Unless and until the CBI passports of all five EC countries that issue them lose their privileged status in Europe, criminals, sanctions evaders, intelligence agents, drug traffickers, arms dealers and human rights violators will continue to exploit the legal loopholes that such identity documents present.