PRESIDENT TRUMP'S DESIGNATION OF NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS AS TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS COULD AFFECT CORRUPT CARIBBEAN CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PROGRAMS AS WELL AS PASSPORT HOLDERS

Upon taking office, Donald Trump on January 20 issued an Executive Order designating Narcotics Cartels as terrorist organizations and SGDTs. While this Order is primarily intended to give American law enforcement additional tools with which to fight the Chinese-manufactured and Mexican-distributed drug Fentanyl, which has been deemed a National Security threat, within fourteen days from that Order, American agencies will be naming those other organizations that they consider direct or indirect threats.

I have been involved in the dark business of money laundering, on one side or the other, for more than half a century. I began as a young bank attorney, watching as America ignored rogue Caribbean tax havens launder the proceeds of Colombian drug crime with impunity. Next, I spent a decade as a career money launderer, concentrating my operations in those same offshore financial centers. Then, after serving time for RICO, I trained and advised a number of law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community in North America, assisting them in catching people like me. After 9/11, and to the present day, I have functioned as a Financial Crime Consultant, assisting the financial sector combat money laundering, which is a central tool of financial crime.

I was, fate will have it, present at the birth of the Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) industry forty-two years ago, and not only am I aware of the intent of its creator that it was intended to assist narcotics traffickers evade detection, arrest and conviction, but that I participated in some of the initial sales of economic passports to prominent leaders of Colombian narcotics cartels. I also became aware that money launderers working for the cartels used CBI passports to travel unimpeded, clean the proceeds of crime, and facilitate the smuggling of illegal drugs into North America. Corrupt Caribbean leaders, intent on maximizing their profits and personal wealth, sold passports to anyone with US Dollars, including those working for the cartels. America, for one reason or another, ignored this illicit activity, and largely stayed out of the Caribbean, affording corrupt actors the opportunity to continue to support organized crime's laundering efforts.

Therefore, the question is when, not if, US law enforcement now will use the tools available in the law for Countering the Financing of Terrorism, against the five East Caribbean states with CBI programs, as well as by directly targeting those laundrymen holding economic passports, especially those Chinese nationals holding EC CBI passports, who use them to move and clean the proceeds of drug crime. It is high time to clean up that financial nightmare in America's backyard.