‘Golden passports’: Sale of citizenship in Caribbean raises security concerns
This article features an investigation by Government Accountability Project’s Investigator, Zack Kopplin, and was originally published here.
The advertisements are everywhere — on transatlantic flights to Europe, on websites and in trade magazines: For as little as $100,000, you can buy a second citizenship. On a tropical island! Visa-free travel to more than 100 countries around the world! Including the European Union!
The program is called citizenship by investment (CBI), although it may be better known as a “golden passport.” It is currently offered in five of the six independent Caribbean countries that make up the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States. Initially viewed as a means for tiny island nations to boost their revenues, the economic citizenship is now increasingly becoming the object of concern.
An investigation involving the Miami Herald, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, more than a dozen other media partners and the Government Accountability Project, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit, shows that individuals from Russia, China and Iran are among the newest citizens, for example, of Dominica, courtesy of golden passports.
Their places of origin would normally result in them facing strict scrutiny before being allowed to enter most countries, but with the Dominican passport they are able to enjoy visa-free access.
Among those gaining golden passports, according to the investigation, were the former head of Afghanistan’s top intelligence agency in 2012, who had already been publicly accused of systematic human rights violations when he obtained a passport from Dominica, and two Russian billionaires of Azerbaijani origin who were later sanctioned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The investigation uncovered the names of roughly 7,700 individuals who purchased passports in recent years from Dominica alone, giving them “backdoor’’ access to the European Union and, until earlier this year, the United Kingdom.
The practice has become one of the more controversial topics in the 15-member Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM.
In addition to Dominica, a lush eastern Caribbean nation, the Caribbean outposts offering golden passports are Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia.
Another Dominica passport purchaser was Pedro Fort Berbel, a Spaniard who ran Sunrise, Florida-based Fort Marketing Group. He was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of running what was akin to a Ponzi scheme that supported his lifestyle and that of his family members. Fort Berbel, who divided his time between Spain and Sunrise, was the sole member of the now-defunct Florida limited liability company.
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that between July 2014 and February 2016 Fort Berbel and Fort Marketing Group raised approximately $38 million from 150,000 investors in a “pay-to-click” fake-internet-ads scam. Millions of dollars were later diverted into personal bank accounts held in the name of Fort Berbel and his family, the SEC alleged. The SEC obtained an asset freeze and an order calling for $7 million in restitution.
Dominica passport holders also include individuals who were later investigated by authorities, charged with crimes or convicted, or who ended up as fugitives, fleeing criminal investigations or prosecutions in their home countries.
Roosevelt Skerrit, the Dominica prime minister who is also head of CARICOM, and his ambassador to the United States, Vince Henderson, were sent a list of detailed questions by OCCRP but declined to comment.
Skerrit did, however, call a press conference and rail against the investigation, describing journalists working on it as terrorists. The scrutiny, he said, “is coming from opposition elements who do not love this country, and who are colluding with people who have zero interest in our wealth and well-being, and want to take bread from Dominicans’ mouths, to undermine our recovery efforts, to undermine our efforts to build resilience in our country.”
The golden passports currently account for over 50% of Dominica’s budget.
Among critics of the passports is St. Vincent and Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. In discussing his opposition to citizenship by investment, Gonsalves has pointed out various efforts in the United States and Europe to crack down on the program. One is a bipartisan bill filed last year and sponsored by Reps. Burgess Owens, a Utah Republican and Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat. The No Travel for Traffickers Act sought to bar from the U.S. visa-waiver program any country that allows individuals to obtain citizenship by investment.
“Human trafficking kingpins and other international criminal enterprises rely heavily on their passport-purchasing power to freely travel the world, establish a foothold in multiple countries, open bank accounts, and evade accountability,” Owens said of his bill. “The No Travel for Traffickers Act addresses the severe security risks of golden passports, signaling a critical step in our efforts to isolate bad actors around the globe.”
The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee but didn’t advance.
In a recent interview with the Herald, Gonsalves noted that upon coming into office in 2001, he did away with a similar program that had been launched in St. Vincent.
“The highest office in the land is that of citizen,” Gonsalves said. “It is that which establishes a bond between people in a civil society, in a political community organized as a state. That’s what keeps people in a bond together and that is not for sale.”
While the surging demand for a second citizenship has become big business, it is not worth the headache or the risk, Gonsalves said. Along with attracting individuals from troubled countries, the program is also luring a growing number of the unscrupulous and those with deep pockets.
This security risk is the reason the United Kingdom decided to impose visa restrictions in July on holders of passports from Dominica, a former British colony.
Careful consideration of Dominica’s operation of a citizenship-by-investment program, U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a statement at the time, “has shown clear and evident abuse of the scheme, including the granting of citizenship to individuals known to pose a risk to the U.K.”
The announcement came five months after leaders of the Caribbean and officials of the U.S. State Department and Treasury met in February in St. Kitts and Nevis to discuss the program. Caribbean leaders in attendance argued that dismantling the program would have negative consequences, including an upsurge in crime in their fragile economies.
U.S. officials, in response, asked the countries to implement several principles to mitigate risk. They are: not processing any applications that were denied in another citizenship-by-investment country; interview all applicants whether in person or virtually; run background checks on each of the applicants with financial intelligence units; conduct routine audits of the program in accordance with international standards; and request law enforcement’s help to retrieve revoked passports. The United States also asked that applications for citizens of Russia and Belarus be suspended, something that Dominica agreed to do, a State Department spokesperson said.
“The U.S. government is pleased with Dominica’s efforts to increase security and due diligence surrounding its program and its collaborative relationship with like-minded countries in the region,” the spokesperson told the Herald when asked specifically about the country.
Dominica passport holders, the spokesperson added, are required to have a valid U.S. visa for entry to the United States. Still, nationals of countries in the English-speaking Caribbean often have an easier time qualifying for a U.S. visa compared to their counterparts in Haiti and elsewhere in the region.
Citizenship by investment programs remain a controversial matter in CARICOM, where leaders for years have discussed their concerns behind closed doors and asked for greater transparency among their colleagues.
“The point is, the people who finance passports, finance the opposition on an ongoing basis, including Chinese companies, and British and European companies that want to get a government in power,” Gonsalves said.
Leland Lazarus, associate director at Florida International University’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, who recently published a research paper about wealthy Chinese who are holders of golden passports, said he found several concerns. Among them: foreigners gaining citizenship and then wielding outsized political influence.
He said Taiwanese diplomats in the Caribbean region have expressed concerns that “they are in danger with these new citizens from mainland China,” who could help to vote in a government that would switch diplomatic recognition, for example, from Taiwan to Beijing.
“That is a very real concern on the part of Taiwanese diplomats,” Lazarus said.
Lazarus found that certain individuals of Chinese descent with questionable financial backgrounds or corruption and criminal allegations hanging over their heads, “wield undue influence at the highest levels of Caribbean governments.”
The biggest example of this was Justin Sun, a crypto multimillionaire who had citizenship from Grenada when he was formally charged with fraud and other securities law violations by the United States. Sun had served as Grenada’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization. He was later stripped of his citizenship.
He is now working on getting citizenship from Dominica.