IS IT NOW TIME TO FINALLY END VISA-FREE TRAVEL TO THE EU FOR HOLDERS OF CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PASSPORTS, DUE TO SYSTEMIC AND INTENTIONAL DUE DILIGENCE FAILURES TO SCREEN APPLICANTS?

                                 

When I told St. Kitts then-Foreign Minister, WILLIAM HERBERT, JR.,* that my Medellin Cartel-linked cocaine trafficking clients could no longer qualify for his newly-independent nation's groundbreaking Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passport program, due to their indictment in the United States. Dr. Herbert advised me to simply find a cooperating law enforcement agency somewhere, and obtain Certificates of Good Standing for the required SKN due diligence. His actual knowledge that my clients were completely unacceptable as applicants, but that he still wanted to sell them passports, was only my first encounter with what was to be an industry that regards the lucrative cash flow it brings into a developing country, and its vendors, as more important than being a proper gatekeeper to bar career criminals, corrupt PEPs, terrorist financiers, and the Usual Suspects, all of who are seeking entry into the EU, and elsewhere, without visa scrutiny of their background, hidden agenda, and dark goals.

Due diligence, at Customer Identification, for applicants at the five East Caribbean states that have CBI passport programs, and at the Republic of Malta, the last EU Member to still sell such passports, is an utter failure, and a continuing insult perpetrated upon the European Union, which accept them for entry visa-free. Whether they be Russian organized crime members, citizens of countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism, corrupt foreign officials from states that are known kleptocracies, or just garden-variety international fraudsters, the wrong people seem to get approved, time after time, by the dysfunctional CIP programs the CBI vendor nations operate.

Unless and until the CBI states move to external, onshore due diligence, by reputable compliance organizations, that will be completely free of corrupt influence, it is high time to revoke the visa-free EU entry status that these passports freely come with. All the other nonsense, about the virtues that these passports convey to their holders, will fall by the wayside, as unfettered EU access is the single most important that CBI passports possess, and without it, their attractiveness to purchasers will disappear, like the cool breeze early on a Caribbean morning.
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*Dr. Herbert would later meet a reported violent end, allegedly at the orders of a terrorist client who wrongly suspected him of stealing money earmarked for weapons purchases, but actually confiscated by an agency of His Majesty's Government.