FACING THE IMMINENT LOSS OF THEIR PRIZED CITIZENSHIP BY INVESTMENT PASSPORT SALES REVENUE, HOW MANY OF THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN CIP STATES WILL RETURN TO DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING?

Compliance officers at international banks in North America and Europe, noting the impact of the EU policy forbidding economic passport programs, and watching the ALEX SAAB MORAN and NICOLAS MADURO cases play out in Federal Courts in New York and Miami, are now expressing well-founded concerns that the leaders of the East Caribbean Five will close their eyes, and permit a resurgence in money laundering activities, to replace lost CBI revenue. They have seen how ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, and to a significantly lesser extent, THE COMMONWEALTH OF DOMINICA, engaged in narcotics money laundering with the Maduro /Saab organization, and foresee a swift return to the massive laundering of narcotics profits that plagued the region in the 1980s and 1990s, and resulted in FATF NCCT designations.

All the necessary prerequisites present themselves; corrupt national leaders whose avarice knows no bounds; pliant banks whose underpaid officers are extremely susceptible to bribes and kickbacks; a total lack of regulatory control; and courts whose judges, appointed by bad leaders, choose to follow their orders, rather than the Rule of Law. Call it a Perfect Storm just waiting for the arrival of professional money launderers, their arms laden with drug profits of Latin American cartels selling their products in Europe, as well as the United States & Canada.

Given the current reduced focus of the U.S. Department of Justice on white collar crime, under orders of the current American administration, and the fact that it will takes a couple of years for the next administration to ramp up enforcement capability, money launderers for the cartels most certainly see a target of opportunity, with fiscal needs that they can easily fulfill, and the cleaning of narco-profits through Caribbean financial institutions can easily ensue, with little or no adverse consequences.

Compliance officers, cognizant that the United States is pointedly ignoring the massive CBI money laundering which has been occurring in the region during the present pro-business American administration, correctly predict that drug money laundering may be back in the Caribbean shortly, as the leadership seeks alternative, albeit illegal, sources of funding to cover their national budgets, and deep pockets, and they intend to watch for it.