November 8, 2022
Every country in the Caribbean that has one of these Citizenship by Investment programmes have suffered reputational damage for selling passports.
If the matter isn’t selling passports to criminals and other undesirables, then the matter becomes an issue of fraud on both ends, the prospective passport investor doesn’t have the funds or the marketing firm is selling passports without proper vetting.
These are plain vanilla problems. Then you have problems that are so messy, where you have investors that have an entire country hostage with investments that are stalled just to have a small island state held hostage, waiting on the economic benefits of these investments that may never materialise with the current arrangement of passport investors.
We see these things over and over again. We aren’t against CBI or hold our nose up in the air like we are above it all, but there needs to be more care when dealing with the selling of passports for investment.
This goes beyond the project in question, but it goes to the reputation of a citizenry. A people caught in the middle of what seems to be impropriety by their own brothers and sisters. A nasty affair these CBI programmes have become.
But the benefits can be tremendous. A large, 100 room resort for a tiny island like Dominica can change the fortunes around for generations. So we see the allure of it all.
Maybe the type of investments are becoming a bit too easy to manipulate? Who says the CBI needs to be used for resorts and hotels? What about energy or carbon credits or something in the digital sector. Loosen up your economies to receive more from these CBIs.
Easier said than done, perhaps. But as it stands now, the way these CBIs are being administered seem to be more trouble than they are triumph.