Dominica's golden passport scheme

Passport loophole for criminals - 6th Nov 2023

For merely $100,000, investors can gain visa-free access to 130 countries, including the EU's Schengen Area, as part of a deal offered by the small Caribbean nation of Dominica. While it's a tempting offer, relative to similar citizenship programmes, and has boosted the economy with over $1 billion since 1993, it's also been a magnet for international lawbreakers.

The initiative's website, ‘The Dominica Economic Citizenship Program' promises "irrevocable second citizenship and passport in only four to six months, with no visit to the country required", marketing itself as the Caribbean's "cheapest citizenship by investment program".

An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists, found criminals from all corners of the world – including Saddam Hussein's former top nuclear scientist and a Turkish millionaire convicted of fraud – had signed up.

Despite obliging applicants to undergo background checks and explicitly vetoing anyone with a criminal record, journalists uncovered over 10 passport purchasers who were later prosecuted in their home countries between 2007 and 2022.

In one case, a California-based immigration lawyer gained a Dominican passport the same month she was indicted for large scale immigration fraud.

Similarly, father and son investor citizens, Fayez and Mutasem Faouri, were both detained in Jordan for financial violations that resulted in company shareholders losing millions of dollars. While Fayez served time, his son's evaded his sentence for years and recently registered multiple businesses in the UK using his Dominican citizenship.

Dominica's prime minister Roosevelt Skerrit has boasted of a citizenship vetting system that "is multi-layered and handled by top-rated due diligence agencies based in the UK and the USA."

Nevertheless, for many, the country's falling short of what's required. International policy watchdog Eka Rostomashvili said, "Governments running such programs are not properly screening applicants or asking enough questions about the source of funds invested."

An EU commission has recently proposed the suspension of such investment citizenship initiatives, potentially ending the practice.

Routinely ravaged by hurricanes, Dominica is a poor, largely agriculturally based country. It may now need to seek out juicy new carrots for investors.