LITIGATION IN SINT MAARTEN REMINDS US THAT DOMINICA IS STILL SELLING DIPLOMATIC PASSPORTS TO DODGY BUYERS

If you monitor Caribbean media, you may have read that the French luxury brand LOUIS VUITTON is suing the Italian casino owner FRANCESCO CORALLO's Sint Maarten Vegas Casino, for the unlawful of its trademarked designs and logos throughout the casino. A local court has reportedly frozen $350,000 of casino profits, during the pending litigation, which to me demonstrates that the plaintiff may have a solid claim for damages for the illegal use of intellectual property. There are also reported allegations of money laundering and tax evasion, linked to the casino owner's operations in other jurisdictions.

What has surfaced, and what is extremely disturbing is the fact that, back in 2011, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica appointed CORALLO the country's Ambassador to the United Nations agency, the FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION (FAO), which made him a Dominican diplomat under the privileges and immunities that such a position conveys. The position carries with zero diplomatic responsibilities, as the FAO only meets once every two years, and its global headquarters in in Rome, which is convenient for Corallo.

The appointment is only one of several that Dominica's Prime Minister, ROOSEVELT SKERRIT, has made to foreign nationals, under suspicious circumstances where it is alleged that illegal consideration may have been accepted to secure it. We have previously reported on several similar appointments, all made by Skerrit, and which are probably violate the requirements of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, of which all UN members are signatories. The abuse of diplomatic passports by those five Eastern Caribbean states that also sell Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) passports has not gone unnoticed by the United States, and has reportedly contributed to American suspicions, and restrictions, imposed, or threatened, on those EC states, especially Dominica and Antigua, both of whom have had dubious diplomatic passport-issuing practices for decades.