[ISL] On the fallout from the sale of passports by St. Kitts and Nevis

[rfmcdonald]

Tristin Hopper's National Post article "‘Greed’ blamed after Canada punishes St. Kitts and Nevis over its buy-a-passport program" looks at the aftermath of a program in St. Kitts and Nevis that sold passports to foreigners. It brought in capital, but it's alleged that there was a lack of oversight.

The Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis had harsh words for the excesses of the buy-a-passport program that got his Caribbean country on Canada’s bad list.

It was “all because one man was caught up with his greed and hubris and self-interest,” Prime Minister Tim Harris recently told his country’s parliament, as reported by the St. Kitts and Nevis Observer.

Anybody with $250,000 could buy a St. Kitts and Nevis passport without so much as visiting the island nation. The country even started selling diplomatic credentials, most notably for Iranian businessman Alizera Moghadam, who entered Canada with a diplomatic passport he claims to have purchased for $1 million.

The United States soon warned that “illicit actors” were freely roaming the globe under the St. Kitts and Nevis name. Canada then upped the ante by ending a much-cherished visa waiver for visiting Kittitians and Nevisians.

And to Parliament, Harris laid the blame on predecessor Denzil Douglas, whom he ousted in a February election.