LET'S NOT FORGET THE ILLEGAL CARIBBEAN INDUSTRY OF SELLING DIPLOMATIC PASSPORTS TO MONEY LAUNDERERS AND OTHER FINANCIAL CRIMINALS

I have long covered the dark Caribbean practice of the region's corrupt leaders selling, for cash (in US Dollars, of course) diplomatic passports, which bad actors use to evade customs inspectors at international airports of entry, but new readers of my financial crime blog may be unfamiliar with this fraud. Perhaps the most egregious example of this method through which senior Caribbean officials, at the highest level was the personal hand delivery, in the UK, by Dominica Prime Minister ROOSEVELT SKERRIT, a diplomatic passport to the corrupt fugitive former Minister of OIL of Nigeria, DIEZANI ALISON- MADUEKE, who then attempted to use the bogus document to evade arrest and detention in the UK for millions she had stolen from the people of Nigeria while in office. And what about the Saint Kitts "Diplomat" who attempted to get a meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada, after buying his diplomatic status for cash, and was summarily rebuffed.

It is an open secret in the East Caribbean among bankers and attorneys that criminals buying Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) passports in the five EC states that sell CBI can easily become "diplomats" if they have enough greenbacks to pass under the table to corrupt officials. Of course, none of these diplomatic passports automatically qualify the holder to be a bona fide diplomat, and none of them fulfill the requirements of the United Nations-approved VIENNA CONVENTION ON DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS, but in the developing world, customs officers are often intimidated into accepting them at face value, and pass the holder through, without checking their bags & baggage, thereby unwittingly facilitating Bulk Cash Smuggling, and the smuggling of financial instruments in aid of money laundering operations, as well as organized international fraud. They may actually pose as working diplomats, but rest assured their true activities are on the wrong side of the law, not in service to their adopted countries.

Readers are invited to search my blog(https://rijock.blogspot.com) where they will find that the corrupt East Caribbean government officials whom we have exposed in the illegal sale of discounted CBI passports to Chinese purchasers intent upon committing crimes and engaging in espionage, have also a long and dirty history of selling their criminal clientele diplomatic identity documents, to further facilitate their activities. Those two countries are "full-service" facilitators of transnational crime, in all its dark variations. You may never look at a diplomat looking to open a bank account again.