THE EUROPEAN UNION CONSIDERS TERMINATING VISA-FREE SCHENGEN ACCESS FOR ALL FIVE EAST CARIBBEAN CBI/CIP STATES, AFTER SEEING REPEATED CHINA MONEY LAUNDERING SCANDALS IN 2024

Regulators in the United States may be pointedly ignoring the money laundering, fraud and corruption scandals publicly exposed by the filing of the MSR Media RICO case in Federal Court in Florida, but across the Pond, in the European Union, they are not only paying close attention, but they are actively pondering whether to terminate the visa-free access to the Schengen Zone currently enjoyed by St. Kitts, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia and Grenada, all of which offer Citizenship by Investment programs. 

We have observed a significant expansion of the EU's monitoring of the unfolding CBI/CIP scandal, which originated in St. Kitts and St. Lucia, and has now further spread to Dominica and the remaining EC states, involving the illegally-discounted sale of passports by two Chinese companies, the CARIBBEAN GALAXY GROUP and HENG SHENG DEVELOPMENT, and the diversion of billions of dollars from CBI sales to Mainland China, funds which by law were required to be delivered to the treasuries of the countries sponsoring the passport sales program. An additional scandal, involving an Eastern European criminal enterprise known as BEMAX, linked to Saint Lucia, has caused further concern bordering on alarm.  

Readers who are following the EU's present court action, seeking to cancel the CBI program of the sole remaining Member state that has such a program, Malta, know that the European Commission position is that applicants for passport sales programs must have a direct connection to their adopted jurisdiction, and they cannot represent a national security threat to the EU. The thousands of sales of Chinese nationals, who neither speak English, nor ever settle or even visit their new Caribbean home. Add to the problem the number of Chinese CBI passport holders found to have been engaged in global criminal activity, it is not difficult to understand the growing EU concerns, and the likely response. Those concerns have been confirmed by multiple reliable sources in Europe.

The complete lack of any significant corrective action by either Saint Kitts or Saint Lucia governments, to respond to an out-of-control situation through reform, which is contributing to the problem, may very well have hastened an EU decision to end Schengen access to those EC passport-selling states, such as the UK did last year for Dominica. Many observers believe that there will be a decision by the European Union sooner, rather than later; we will be watching.