The authorities of the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis have announced that the Public Good Investment Option (PGIO) is now de facto available to foreigners seeking citizenship of the country. Government officials have also commented on the news about the launch of EU investigations into the integrity of the St Kitts economic citizenship program. In addition, they have confirmed that the increase of the ‘golden passport’ price that took place in the summer of 2023 was the right decision.
The PGIO has become fully available to foreign investors
Finally, foreign nationals wishing to obtain citizenship of St Kitts and Nevis by investment can use a new path that leads to the goal. The PGIO program was de-jure started a year ago after the local Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) published the information on the official website.
De-facto, however, the program has not been functional because no agency has been authorized to receive funding through it. Consequently, applicants for St Kitts and Nevis citizenship by investment have had to make use of other options such as purchase of real property, for example.
An announcement of the factual start of the PGIO program was made in the framework of a webinar organized by MSR Media Company and its subsidiary company MSR Hotels on January 24, 2024. These companies are the first (and only thus far) approved doers of public good in St Kitts and Nevis. Philippe Martinez, head of MSR Media, had earlier filed a suit against the former administration of the local CIU accusing it of ‘organizing international fraud’.
Michael Martin, the present head of the CIU said that the Government of St Kitts and Nevis was pleased to see the PGIO program launched. When asked why the launch of the program had been postponed for so long, he said ‘Now is the best time to start’.
The abovementioned webinar started with a discussion about the potential of St Kitts and Nevis as a location for shooting TV shows and movies. Actors Elizabeth Hurley and Jeff Goldberg appeared on the screen and took part in the discussion.
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The lawsuit against the former CIU administration
Only by the end of the webinar, during the question-and-answer session, Martinez touched on the topic that many participants had been hoping to hear more about. This is the ongoing legal proceedings against the former CIU administration. Martinez had accused it of money laundering, corruption, and fraud. Producer Philippe Martinez was not shy to speak his mind about the former administration.
Journalist Wyss from Bloomberg raised this question referring to a letter from MRS that had become available to the public in November 2023. A week prior to the webinar, Bloomberg had also published an article by Wyss titled ‘Golden Passports for as Little as $100,000 Threatened by Crime Crackdown’.
Martinez noted that he wanted the investigation process to be as transparent as possible. In his opinion, illegal discounts were the main threat to the Caribbean citizenship-by-investment programs. He said that some companies were selling Caribbean citizenship for only a portion of the price, as little as 70,000 dollars or even less. They had invented some tricky discount schemes to be able to do that.
The producer claimed that such illegal discounts were a major threat to all Caribbean countries selling their citizenship to foreigners. Martinez said that everybody had known about such schemes but nobody had been doing anything about them so he decided to file a lawsuit.
The producer and his team had done their own investigation. The evidence that they had found had shown that some St Kitts CIU officials had been posing threats to the national security of the United States.
Martinez emphasized that the problem was in the past already. Accusations were filed against those companies and individuals that had nothing to do with the present administration of the CIU. How had they threatened the national security of the USA? They had been illegally selling citizenship of St Kitts and Nevis for US dollars and using US bank accounts.
According to Martinez, the new Prime Minister and the Prosecutor General had had to amend the economic citizenship program to protect it against fraudulent schemes. He also said that the national governments that turned a blind eye to illegal discounts were causing concern about the ‘golden passport’ industry on the part of the EU authorities.
Wyss asked the representatives of the St Kitts and Nevis authorities to speak on the question too. But the Honorable Garth Wilkin, the current Prosecutor General, declined to comment. He said that the lawsuit filed by Martinez was outside his jurisdiction.
EU investigations into St Kitts and Nevis economic citizenship program
Wyss also asked about the investigations into the Caribbean citizenship-by-investment programs (including the St Kitts program) supposedly launched by the EU authorities. He had written about it in the above mentioned article for Bloomberg published a week ago.
This time Wilkin was much more talkative. He said that the Government ‘did not have any information about any investigations into any economic citizenship program’. According to the Prosecutor General, the authorities of St Kitts and Nevis were ‘in permanent contact’ with the EU administration.
Wilkin also noted that the EU officials were going to hold talks with top Caribbean officials in Dominica at the end of January 2024. He did not mention what was on the agenda, however. He also emphasized that the St Kitts and Nevis administration was on friendly terms with the EU authorities and the country supplied all the information about the economic citizenship program that the EU officials requested.
The consequences of the price increase for St Kitts and Nevis economic citizenship program
When asked about the new rules and new prices, the head of the CIU Michael Martin said he was certain that the decision to raise the prices was right. In his opinion, decreased prices for second citizenship were one of the main reasons why Caribbean countries had problems with Great Britain and the EU. ‘This is a race to the bottom and we are not taking part in it’, he said.
Martin insisted that the new price of St Kitts and Nevis citizenship was adequate even though now it is twice as high as the prices charged by other Caribbean countries selling their passports to foreign investors. St Kitts and Nevis doubled the price in the summer of 2023. Martin said that the price competition practices were unfruitful. A passport of St Kitts and Nevis was a precious asset to have and it should not be underpriced, according to Michael Martin. Except for the price, St Kitts and Nevis had many other competitive advantages and could help promote the local citizenship-by-investment program, in Martin’s view.
Wilkin, in his turn, added that decreasing the price of golden passports makes the world leaders concerned. According to him, countries that sell their citizenship for low prices ‘risk geopolitical scrutiny’.
As you can see, the Governments of Caribbean countries that administer citizenship-by-investment programs have to maneuver wisely. They have to keep the EU and the UK authorities happy if they want to preserve visa-free access to the jurisdictions for their citizens. After all, it is one of the most important selling points as far as their passports are concerned. Is the price increase a wise maneuver? It is probably too early to say but we will monitor the changes in St Kitts and Nevis statistics closely and we promise to keep you posted on them.
30 January 2024 