ALERT FOR COUNTERFEIT GRENADA PASSPORTS CREATED BY SOFTWARE READILY AVAILABLE ONLINE

Compliance officers tasked with Account Opening responsibilities at international financial institutions are advised that it is now possible for bad actors, using a service available on the Internet for a very reasonable sum, to create a bogus Grenada passport online. The program offers a template to assist the user in building a credible, authentic-appearing result, examples of which have already shown up on the 'Web, with all the attributes and components of a legitimate passport personal identity page. The charge to use this criminal service is a nominal ten dollars.

What is the most disturbing aspect about the situation, which frankly presents a golden opportunity for international money launderers and financial criminals, is that the Government of Grenada has remained totally silent about this development. Given that Grenada's Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program provides, after payment of a six figure fee, for foreign nationals to acquire a Grenadian passport, the possession of one does not rise any red flags with compliance officers, and the counterfeit versions will be easily accepted. Therefore, we ask why Grenada has not raised the alarm among the global financial community.

Most people do not know that there is no international resource available to confirm the authenticity of foreign passports; what you see when someone runs a machine-readable passport through a scanner is merely to read the encoded information, to confirm that it matches the printed information, and creating a passport that will pass such elementary scrutiny is part of the template process, I understand; in many developing countries' immigration desks, passport review doesn't even do that.

Therefore, as technology assisting crime advances past the ability of law enforcement to identify, interdict and deter it, this shall serve as a warning to compliance officers that passport pages appearing to be from Grenada are perhaps not what they appear to be, legitimate means of personal identification; govern yourselves accordingly.