THE CARIBBEAN'S CULTURE OF OFFICIAL CORRUPTION DUE TO THE CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT INDUSTRY: WILL THE SOLUTION BE ADOPTED?

As a close observer of the economic passport industry since its birth forty years ago, I continue to be disappointed by what appears to be the fact that its extremely lucrative nature has resulted in systemic corruption, without exception. The money has proven to be too tempting for underpaid government officials operating in dysfunctional local economies without sufficient revenue to even sustain their small governmental budgets. Accepting dodgy CBI applicants who are laundering the proceeds of crime through their application fees, accepting bribes and kickbacks from bad actors with dark agendas, and in essence prostituting themselves on the altar of the US Dollar have become the rule, rather than the exception in the Eastern Caribbean states, without exception.

Now a senior official, at the highest level of the United States government, with direct policy authority from President Trump, has propounded and proposed reform legislation, known as the EASTERN CARIBBEAN CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT REGULATORY AUTHORITY AGREEMENT ACT. If and when enacted into law by the five EC CBI & CIP states, it will serve to clean up the existing hot mess that is economic citizenship, and it provides reform, with the necessary enforcement tools to do the job.

In truth and in fact, the leadership of the Eastern Caribbean states is desperately trying to sweep it under the rug, as it is an existential threat to the bribe-laden current system, and will turn off the flow of dirty money into their pockets. They are raising the usual smokescreen of national sovereignty, which in the region is often the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Given the position of the current American administration, regarding CBI passports in the hands of foreign, especially Chinese, nationals as a direct National Security threat, and their distinct displeasure with the Caribbean leaders' present love affair with the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba and China, they can expect that their refusal to adopt these reforms with have serious consequences for their constituents, including blocking visas to the US, and even more draconian measures.

If the Caribbean wants to keep their economic passport golden goose, they are well advised to bend the knee to valid American concerns, and adopt the new proposed statutes, without discussion or feeble attempts to delay the matter through negotiation, so as not to provoke an American administration which has demonstrated that, unlike its predecessors, has teeth, and will use them.