Public Relations consultant Jerry George on his “Early in the Morning Program” streamed live on Facebook, has confirmed a warning made to the people of SVG by Minister of Finance Hon. Camillo Gonsalves, on April 5th, 2018 in the House of Parliament.
On April 5th, 2018 Gonsalves told members of parliament one of the main issues with CIP is the dismantling of corresponding banking relations.
George who has made it publicly clear to the opposition New Democratic Party and their followers that Citizenship by Investment Program for SVG is “dead” and should not be pursued, highlighted and expressed further concerns on the potentially damaging effects of CIP and corresponding banking relations.
“The issue of corresponding banks is something I think we are not paying enough attention to, the day something goes wrong we will all find out, Belize did, the Prime Minister of that country had to hustle off to Washington to ask the US banks to allow the flow of cash in and out of his country”.
George said we cannot do business outside of the region if we don’t have corresponding banking relations.
He would have been echoing the sentiments of Gonsalves in Parliament when he stated;
“ When Vincentians cannot get money by way of remittances because corresponding banks are destroyed, when local hoteliers can’t open because the relationship is destroyed, what are we going to say, it does not matter because we have sold so many passports to these many people from the other side of the world”.
George further lamented that business transaction across the world uses US currency, so when the banks cease the relationship, we cannot send, we cannot receive, and it appears that this serious matter is not of concern for many of our leaders in the region.
“ When we want to run the systems ourselves and we realize we don’t have the power to, don’t complain, if we going to continue running these CIP’s leaving large loopholes for people to exploit especially criminals, it will hurt all of us”.
In April of 2018, Gonsalves said if St Vincent embraces CIP what will distinguish our passport from others.
“What is our competitive advantage in the selling of our passport and citizenship, it can only be one and that’s price, and people will pay anything to get into the Schengen zone, evade taxes, loopholes, in the way the OECD has described”.
SVG’s government is the only one in the OECS who has opposed CIP the program, while the opposition New Democratic Party has made it a part of their policy going forward.