THE USE OF CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PASSPORTS TO FACILITATE TERRORIST FINANCING THROUGH MONEY LAUNDERING

While we have written extensively on the use of Maltese CBI passports by money launderers and bulk cash smugglers to funnel cash to HEZBOLLAH and HAMAS, we have not as yet explained the value of CBI passports, issued by the five Eastern Caribbean states with economic passport programs, as facilitators of what is defined as terrorist financing. Visa-free access to the Members of the EU and to the UK allow the holders entry to financial structures which are artfully employed to convey both the Proceeds of Crime, as well as Donations and funds extorted from expats living the the Diaspora, into fronts in the Middle East, that ultimately end up in the hands of Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organizations.

Such terrorist funding, with bogus or controlled charities, as well as front companies, as the recipients, often through cooperating third countries, such as Turkey/Turkiye, passes out of Europe right under the eyes of bank compliance officers. Middle East laundrymen, acting on behalf of terrorist organizations, armed with CBI passports, enter the European financial structure with impunity, properly clothed as international trade businessmen, or charitable funders, and exploit the system. CBI passports issued by Grenada, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, Dominica and Antigua & Barbuda are all tools of laundrymen working for terrorists.

While nobody in the EU is going to come right out and say it, countering money laundering is one of the major reasons Europe is fed up with being a facilitator of terrorist financing through money laundering. It may officially chose the grounds of failure of CBI passport to have an actual relationship with the jurisdiction where they obtain their passports, but underneath it all, money laundering is one of the principal reasons to block visa-free access to Europe.