FBI CRIMINAL HISTORY REQUIRED FOR CBI PASSPORT APPLICATION? NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!

                                     

I was perplexed this morning when Sam Bayat sent me an article, written by a Los Angeles-based attorney handling Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passport applications, suggesting that his clients might be required to obtain a clean FBI criminal history report when seeking an economic passport.While the absence of felony convictions might be a requirement for "Golden Visas" issued by the Members of the European Union, I assure you that, to the best of my knowledge, NONE of the five East Caribbean states that sell CBI have ever required anything close to this FBI certificate. Telling clients that such may be required is inaccurate, even today in 2023. Please show me where such is currently a requirement on any application.

To the contrary, ineffective due diligence performed by government agencies processing CBI passports and citizenship in the East Caribbean have sold passports to international fugitives, sanctions evaders, convicted white collar fraudsters, terrorist financiers, radical linked to designated terrorist organizations, citizens of countries named as State Supporters of Terrorism, and many other types of the Usual Suspects that are totally unqualified to apply for a CBI passport, which they use to conceal their true identities.

For those whom the origins of CBI are before their time, allow me to walk down memory lane a bit, and relate where it all began. It was St. Kitts & Nevis that was the first jurisdiction to offer Citizenship by Investment passports, now known as CBI to some, CIP to others. It was the Foreign Minister at SKN, the Honourable William Herbert, Jr., known one and all in Basseterre, and also over in Anguilla, where he also maintained a thriving legal practice, facilitating money laundering operations of his many clients, yours truly included, as Billy Herbert who introduced me to such useful identity identity documents. 

 Dr. Herbert advised that he would personally facilitate expedited processing of my clients' applications, so when a client.in this case the late Georges Krancenblum, returned from Panama with passport-friendly photographs of a number of individuals in his organization, plus certain individuals who were leaders in the Medellin cartel, from whom he purchased his cocaine, I started the application process, seeing that a large amount of US Dollars was deposited in shell corporation accounts in a certain bank in Anguilla.

When, as often happened in that business, those clients were indicted in Federal Court in the Southern District of Florida,, and many were forced to flee the jurisdiction, I was required to advise Dr. Herbert of the situation, His response was that I should secure some form of clean bill of health, from a place where their new criminal history was not yet known, to complete the application process. wisely, I chose not to proceed, and that's one of the reasons why I am here to relate that tale today, and was not caught up in the subsequent cases involving the Cartel's leaders.

Has it really changed that much since 1982? In my humble opinion, the answer is sadly, no. Money talks very loudly in the East Caribbean CBI jurisdictions, and if you doubt it, start reading all the articles I have published over the last 20 years about criminals employing CBI passports with impunity, on a global basis, especially in the developing world, but also everywhere in the European Union. Those passports remain instruments of white collar crime, sanctions evasion, terrorist financing, and everything else that the Usual Suspects use them for. Nothing has changed.