UNANSWERED QUESTIONS PLAGUE GRENADA'S TROUBLED CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PROGRAM

The disclosure that Chinese vendors of the Economic Citizenship (CBI/CIP) program of Grenada, HENG SHENG, were engaged in the sale of illegally-discounted citizenships, a topic which has roiled the investment migration industry throughout the five East Caribbean states which offer such schemes,  has created a feeling of uncertainty abroad. What will become of the substantial investment many clients have made in the Grenada citizenship program, if it turns out that they acquired their prized passport, at an illegal discount, which could render it void as a matter of law? 

Heng Sheng is now known to have actively solicited Grenada's full range of CBU vendors, including many of its licensed international marketing agents, registered sub-agents, and even unlicensed agents, promising USD$50,000 payments, over and above actual commissions; we have seen several examples of their offers, guaranteeing that the applicants will eventually qualify for US Visas, which is troubling.  Furthermore, the recent arrests of a number of Chinese criminals in the United States, begs the question: did any of them enter America using Grenada CBI passports containing US Visas? Two of Heng Sheng's sales facilities are in China, and it curiously has an office in San Francisco. 

 In other jurisdictions in the region, government officials have hastily announced that such illegally-obtained passports will be cancelled, but there is only silence from the head of Grenada's regulator, the, Investment Migration Authority (IMA), THOMAS ANTHONY. I asked him for a comment on this issue, but he declined to respond on the record. It appears to me to be just another government coverup of CIP misconduct. The situation, which is similar those which we have previously reported on in Saint Kitts & Nevis, and in Saint Lucia, could also end up involving claims of fraud and money laundering, such as is alleged in the RICO case, presently pending in Federal Court in the United States.

Another major issue that is unresolved, and extremely troubling, is the illegal sale of Grenada Citizenships to Russian nationals, in violation of the ruling of the IMA blocking all sales to Russians after March 31, 2013, which came after extensive consultations with American government officials. Grenada alone, of all the EC states, sold citizenships to Russians after the other four jurisdictions, responding to international sanctions due to the War in the Ukraine, took action against Russia for applications in 2022.

The IMA did allow all applications submitted before the March 31 deadline to be processed after that date,  a loophole that apparently was abused . It has been widely reported that a large number of Russian applications, submitted after the deadline, were illegally backdated to a valid prior date, and IMA then processed them, which is a violation of Grenadian CIP laws, and therefore renders those passports invalid.  Again, Mr. Anthony has declined to comment or respond to our inquiries, and readers are free to draw their own conclusions, but there were only a finite number of applications pending, and logged in, on March 31, and no applications arriving after that cutoff date should have been opened, let alone accepted and processed. Since applications arriving subsequent to the closing date were not rejected out of hand, there are issues of corruption that must now be explored. An investigation by an outside law enforcement agency, and thus not tainted by the possibility of the payment of bribes, is appropriate and necessary, as soon as possible.