SAINT LUCIA MINISTER RICHARD FREDERICK, TRYING TO DIVERT ATTENTION FROM CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT SCANDAL, IS ALLEGED TO BE NARCOTICS TRAFFICKER IN U.S. DIPLOMATIC CABLE PUBLISHED BY WIKILEAKS

RICHARD FREDERICK, is a Minister for Housing and Local Government, within the Office of the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, who has been leading a partisan political attack attempting to divert attention from the massive Citizenship by Investment passport sales scandal. Allegations have appeared in a number of confidential American diplomatic cables in 2006 containing information that he was implicated in the use of Saint Lucia as a transshipment point for drugs being smuggled into the United States, all of which have been published on the Internet by Wikileaks. One of the cables bears the name of the Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d'Affaires in the American Embassy at the time. Wikipedia asserts that the figure of twenty five million dollars was involved.

Frederick, together with DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER ERNEST HILAIRE, is attempting to divert the attention of Saint Lucians from the CBI scandal made public by the filing, in the United States, of a RICO case that alleges tens of thousands of St. Lucia economic citizenships were illegally sold in China, at greatly discounted rates, that billions of dollars which belonged to the SLC government were stolen through fraud, and that Hilaire and others in Saint Lucia Government corruptly assisted a Chinese company, CARIBBEAN GALAXY REAL ESTATE LIMITED, in committing fraud and money laundering. He and Hilaire are blaming the Opposition, in an obvious partisan political attack upon former Prime Minister Allen Chastanet, while stonewalling all efforts to obtain information about the allegations.

Minister Richard Frederick

Frederick and Hilaire, in a private video program circulated on the Internet, blamed the plaintiffs in the RICO lawsuit, and made defamatory statements about them, as well as about Allen Chastanet. Hilaire has publicly refused to tell his constituents precisely how many passports his government authorized Caribbean Galaxy to sell in China, claiming that such information is restricted business data which only Galaxy can allow to be released, notwithstanding that these are government figures. The right to sell at least 28,000 passports are said to be issued by Hilaire's government, in a program that had no legal authorization under the CIP laws, and there may be substantially more passports involved.

Frederick, in a recent appearance, patronized Saint Lucia PM Pierre in a public setting at a meeting He continues to support Hilaire's efforts to block the disclosure of what Hilaire contends is restricted information about Saint Lucia's CBI/CIP program notwithstand the public outcry about its right to learn all details in the developing scandal. Reports that the RICO case will be expanded to include a number of Saint Lucian government officials continue to circulate, and we are monitoring the case, as we await the filing of an Amended Complaint.