SEIZURE OF USD$3.8m IN COCAINE IN SAINT LUCIA CONFIRMS ITS ROLE AS AN EMERGING MAJOR TRANSIT POINT FOR ILLEGAL DRUGS BOUND FOR THE UNITED STATES

                               

On May 28, 2025, the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force seized a shipment of nearly 200 kilograms of kilo-sized cocaine bricks, which it has since conservatively estimated as having a street value of USD$3.8 million. A seizure of this size, obviously en route to North America, and far above what the population of this small Caribbean state could ever consume, confirms that Saint Lucia, with a growing organized crime problem, has now become a major transit hub for Colombian cocaine.

While most compliance officers are currently focused on money laundering issues involving US Dollar payments by dodgy applicants for the country's Chinese-dominated Citizenship by Investment (CIP) program, payments connected with cocaine shipments pose a new and dangerous threat to the major American financial institutions that offer correspondent banking services to Saint Lucia's indigenous banks. Transhipment of large quantities of narcotics often involves successive covert shipping operations, requiring advance payment in full, which can entail local Caribbean banks being called upon to either produce bulk cash by customers, or to accept large amounts of bulk cash delivered by purchasers or new shippers taking possession.

Given the extremely small list of American financial institutions offering correspondent banking services to Saint Lucia, we are wondering whether those few banks have been adequately screening for narcotics-related financial transactions, or if compliance officers at those US banks are erroneously assuming that large cash deposits, and resulting international funds transfers are CIP payments especially the Miami offices of those American banks, which appear to have frontline responsibility for the respective correspondent accounts. Being complicit in the unwitting facilitation of multi-million narco-payments, with the result that it draws the unwanted attention of Drug Enforcement Administration investigators, is definitely something those compliance officers would not welcome. perhaps they should now look at Saint Lucia as a jurisdiction of increased Country Risk.