Having served more than 25 years, he is now seventy years old; I note that he became a subject of the Last Prisoner Project, which targeted those serving extremely long terms for marijuana convictions. Otherwise, he would still be imprisoned. Given that marijuana has been more or less legalized, I wonder if justice was truly served in his case.
The recent experience of a Dominican national who is the president elect of the Caribbean largest travel and tourism association speak volume for the future of the region. GREGOR NASSIEF, who is affiliated with one of Dominica's CBI hotel projects, was denied a renewal of his U.S. visa, prompting Caribbean tourism media to warn that the inability of West Indians to enter the United States, could seriously impact the region's competitiveness as a travel destination, as well as interfere with international business travel of Caribbean entrepreneurs.
Until and unless the Caribbean CBI and CIP economic passport issuing states choose to engage in radical and complete reform of their programs, restrictions on U.S. visas will not only continue, but will increase in severity. The United States government judges these rogue programs as a National Security threat, and as long as arrogant Caribbean leaders refuse to clean up the money laundering, fraud and corruption that infect their CBI agencies, the restrictions will increase exponentially, damaging weak local economies, and making life difficult for the average Eastern Caribbean resident, who is already in economic difficulty.
When Dominica and Antigua clean up their Citizenship by Investment programs, conditions will improve, but apparently neither PM ROOSEVELT SKERRIT nor PM GASTON BROWNE are listening. Therefore, buckle up, for it is only going to get worse in 2027 and beyond. Arrogance and xenophobia amongst Caribbean leaders will again meet a response from the a Trump Administration soon to refocus on the region.
Antiguan government regulators (FSRC) are reportedly putting the finishing touches on a scheme to refloat the insolvent GLOBAL BANK OF COMMERCE, and they intend to accept dodgy Chinese funding to achieve this. Our readers are familiar with the money laundering Global Bank, now under Administration when it was unable to remit the substantial deposits of a Canadian bank customer on demand. More directly, that indigenous bank was the allegedly the primary vehicle for money laundering narcotics profits and terrorist funding by ALEX SAAB MORAN, of the Venezuelan cartel lead by former President NICOLAS MADURO MOROS.
The funding, which will reportedly come from a Hong Kong-based entity (FANCY BRIDGE LTD.) linked to WIOC, which is believed presently to be under criminal investigation in the United States, both linked to corruption involving the country's arrogant Prime Minister, GASTON BROWNE, who has also been interfering with the proceedings filed against Global Bank, by its Canadian victim. Payments into Antigua, for local senior government officials, have apparently been documented by local media.
There is a well-placed fear that, once Chinese funding is placed into Global Bank, it will never be able to secure a correspondent banking relationship in the American financial structure, due to the taint of Saab Moran's extensive laundering history there, and it could end up sanctioned by OFAC. as a National Security threat to the United States.
Antiguan citizens, who are already facing repeated instances where there American-based credit card transactions are being declined, for compliance purposes, could face the nightmare of losing all direct correspondent accounts with U.S. banks, due to Global's prior incestuous intimate working relationship with other Antiguan banks, rendering the entire Antiguan financial structure too high risk for American financial institutions to accept. Antigua could end up totally cut off from U.S. banks, which would push its distressed economy, especially imports, into insolvency.
In the aftermath of the action taken by the Government of the United States to capture the sitting President of Venezuela, and bring him to New York to stand trial in U.S. District Court, we have been repeatedly presented with an issue of great public importance to the citizens of the Eastern Caribbean states: Whether the law provides an exception to the Head-of-State Immunity Doctrine, to allow the United States to indict and try, on criminal charges, any or all of the five Prime Ministers of the five Eastern Caribbean states that sell economic citizenships, also known as Citizenship by Investment or CBI/CIP. The Five EC states are Saint Kitts & Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Grenada.
This an extremely complex legal issue, and it deserves an objective analysis, involving both explicit and implicit waivers of immunity. Of course, the legal argument supporting the Nicolas Maduro case can be disposed of easily; Maduro's status as a duly elected leader of Venezuela was bogus, as he conclusively lost the presidential election in 2024, to Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who received twice the number of votes, but Maduro, fraudulently claiming 51% of the votes cast, illegally claimed victory. Inasmuch as the United States never accepted him as sitting president, his capture and removal were not subject to Head-of-State immunity. There is no dispute in that matter.
However, when you shift to the leaders of the five EC CBI-issuing states, the issues become far more complicated. The central reason that America wants these five Labour Party, left-leaning pro-China and pro-Cuba leaders out of power is that their national policies, led by their massive sales of CBI passports to Chinese nationals, have become a Clear and Present Danger to the National Security of the United States. Unfortunately, that in and of itself is not an exception recognized under the decisional case.
So we look to legal authorities for guidance; perhaps the leaders and most recent law review article on the subject, HEAD OF STATE AND FOREIGN OFFICIAL IMMUNITY AFTER SAMANTAR: A SUGGESTED APPROACH, 34 Fordham Intl. Law J. (2011),which takes us to the United States Supreme Court case of Samatar vs. Yousuf, 560 U.S. 305 (2010), holding (1) The Court must look to the Common Law, not the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act for a solution, and (2) The position of the Department of State on the subject must be given great weight.
What about the grounds stated in support of the American Maduro capture, unlawful holder of elected office? In truth and in fact, the National Elections conducted in the Eastern Caribbean cannot be declared to be free and fair. They are marred by widespread and organized voter fraud, whether by cash payments made in advance to voters to guide their choice, the promise of other consideration, such as employment in a seriously dysfunctional economy, airfare and other gifts paid to impoverished and unemployed individuals, and several other types of voter fraud, all of which result in a skewed result in favor of what amounts to a one-party, non-democratic state. Could the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, determine that these five prime ministers are not lawfully in office? Most certainly.
Alternatively, One of the grounds cited in the case against General Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator, was the fact that his illegal activities, designed to amass great wealth through drug trafficking, private pursuit of personal enrichment, all linked to the charges filed against him, led the Executive Branch to deny him immunity. The massive fraud, money laundering and corruption of the five Eastern Caribbean Prime Ministers, which are part of what would be the charged misconduct in their indictments, qualify for a similar interpretation by the Secretary of State.
Therefore, we find that the United States has sufficient legal authority to bring the appropriate criminal charges against these five sitting Caribbean leaders, and given the increasing National Security risks to America that they represent, there should be no delay in the Trump Administration filing indictments forthwith, taking them into custody, and prosecuting them; let it be done.
Venezuelan government bonds, of which approximately USD$150bn are in default, are to be exchanged for new government obligations, according to an announcement made on May 13, by the country's Economics and Finance Ministry. On the basis of this positive official news, the market value of the bonds has reportedly soared to as high as 50% of face value, according to speculators known to be investing in those instruments. Previously, the market only supported 20-30% sales.
The ministry spokesman stated that holders of the bonds would most likely have to take an up to fifty per cent "haircut," or discount, when the replacement bonds are exchanged for the original instruments, which will have a 10-20 year maturity; more details are expected to be released later this month.
