DON'T LOOK TO THE UNITED STATES TO SOLVE EUROPE'S BLOODY CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PASSPORT MONEY LAUNDERING NIGHTMARE: EU, TAKE ACTION FORTHWITH

I happen to know more than a little about both money laundering and the employment of of Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passports to facilitate it. I was a career money launderer in the "Tax Havens" (read: the money laundering republics) of the East Caribbean states, five of which sell CBI passports, for a decade, and I worked closely with the man many call the father of St. Kitts' groundbreaking passport program, the late William Herbert, Jr., former Foreign Minister of St. Kitts & Nevis, until his untimely demise, reportedly over the alleged loss of funds belonging to the IRA.

The news that the Members of the European Union, having had more than enough with the use and abuse of CBI passports, to engage in money laundering, terrorist financing, and financial crime, is contemplating terminating all visa-free access by the holders of those prized identity documents, is music to me ears. The reason this pleases me is that, since the United States has deliberately, as a matter of national policy, ignored the severe money laundering threats posed by CBI passports for decades, someone has finally stepped up to deal with this tool of crime.

For decades, yours truly has loudly blown the whistle in the US, to both its law enforcement agencies, as well as its secretive intelligence community, about the clear & present danger of CBI passposts, but due to what is certainly a State Department policy of not appearing to be an overbearing superpower, America has kept its hands off what are basically Caribbean jurisdictions whose corrupt and greedy leadership has thrived on dirty money spent on CBI passports, both in the purchase thereof, and their subsequent use to facilitate global money laundering. The US has even gone so far as to decline to pursue the systemic CBI-enabled money laundering operation, by American citizens, in the Republic of Malta, Europe's sole holdout in the dirty business of CBI sales to criminals.

We welcome Europe's belated, but necessary,, efforts to shut down this important loophole, through which money launderers drive a truck full of the proceeds of crime in, and through, that region's financial institutions, and hope that the EU's actions will result in delivering a fatal blow to East Caribbean state (and Maltese) CBI-facilitated financial crime for once and for all. Frankly, I am tired of watching the laundrymen use those passports to clean the proceeds of crime in the European financial structure.