FINANCIAL CRIMINALS, UNHAPPY WITH BEING THE SUBJECT OF ATTENTION WHEN ENTERING THE EU WITH A CBI PASSPORT, NOW SHIFT TO DIFFERENT TACTICS: ACQUIRING FRAUDULENT CITIZENSHIP BY DESCENT

If you are a career money launderer or transnational fraudster, the last thing you want is to be interrogated at EU Passport Control, when arriving armed with a Caribbean Citizenship by Investment (CBI) passport for entry. If you have noticed lately, more and more firms in the investment migration sector are advertising their ability to process Citizenship by Descent, where you qualify for a passport in an EU Member state through your personal ancestry.

The problem is, criminals who do not qualify, often cheat they way in; they obtain forged or counterfeit evidence of an parent or grandparent from that jurisdiction. They may enlist the services of any one of a number of criminal enterprises that exist for that illicit purpose. They may successfully bribe their way into a citizenship, through underpaid, and corrupt government officials.

Until and unless the compliance world finds a way to identify passports acquired through Citizenship by Descent, such as foreign Place of Birth, brand new passport, passport user with suspicious travel history, or some other means of quickly and effectively determining how the holder became an EU citizen, I am afraid that money launderers and all the other Usual Suspects will be able to employ Citizenship by Descent passports to facilitate criminal activity in the European Union.