HUBRIS AMONG CARIBBEAN PROFESSIONALS MAY RESULT IN THE REFORM THAT CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PASSPORT PROGRAMS DESPERATELY NEED

I have been personally involved in the East Caribbean since the late nineteen seventies; first as a young international lawyer seeking business opportunities for American clients; then, as a career money launderer for a full decade, working with local attorneys to launder the proceeds of clients' crimes, and hide them from US authorities; and finally for the past thirty years observing and consulting on financial crime in the region, to protect the financial world, and catch the bad actors in real time. I have come to love the people of the region, who suffer leadership whose self-interest, and greed, often trump their responsibility to their constituents.

I have learned that, for a number of reasons, the Caribbean's powerful, educated professional class of lawyers and government officials have ruled and controlled the former British Overseas Territories in the region, now independent, with impunity, as the United States, preoccupied with the Middle East and other trouble spots, has pointedly ignored its Caribbean neighbors for decades.

As the direct result, the lawyers and physicians running those island nations correctly have concluded that they can get away with just about any amount of misconduct short of positioning themselves tactically with America's enemies; the invasion of Grenada being a case in point.
Now, however, something has occurred which could bring about much needed reform in one of my personal sore spots in the region, the pervasive corruption which has infected the area's five East Caribbean states that offer Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) passport sales programs. The bold, public statements exposing massive corruption and illegality in the St. Kitts CBI program, made by MSR Media, has resulted in two major defamation lawsuits, brought by parties alleged to be the very bad actors in the program. These actions, obviously based upon hubris, as the parties know that they enjoy major advantages in the local court system, have allowed the defendants' counsel to initiate §782 Discovery proceedings in Federal Court in the US, which will give the defendants in the St. Kitts proceeding evidence that will refute the allegations of defamation.

It will also break wide open the systemic corruption in the region's CBI programs, as the public disclosure of such blatant criminal activity will have a knock-on effect elsewhere. I wonder if those arrogant plaintiffs understood that they were unleashing the forces of reform when choosing to go after a voice of truth? It's too late now, gentlemen, for meaningful reform is coming to CBI, you cannot abide the alternative which is the termination of the program altogether.

(By the way, that's Attorney General of St Kitts Wilkin saying, in the attached illustration, what a good scam they have going).