St Kitts and Nevis CIU terminates Savory & Partners

After months of allegations of fraud, the Citizenship by Investment Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis has terminated Savory & Partners, as a marketing agent.

The Dubai-based citizenship by investment (CBI) agent can no longer submit applications to the St Kitts and Nevis CBI programme.

“Please be advised that Savory and Partners is no longer a registered International Marketing Agent and is not authorized to submit files to the Citizenship by Investment Unit. Service Providers are further advised that, effective immediately, the unit will not process any new files that have originated from Savory and Partners and that any Service Provider submitting any new files from that entity, may have their local Service Provider’s license suspended,” the St Kitts and Nevis Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) said in a notice on Wednesday.

The Texas-based media outlet which has been reporting on the alleged fraud for months said the St Kitts and Nevis Citizenship by Investment Programme and the government may have lost between US$30 million and US$130 million in revenue and overall economic impact.

In an earlier report Caribbean News Now said the abusive and possible fraudulent activity has been going on since 2016 and escalated following the introduction of the so-called Hurricane Relief Fund option in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 which substantially reduced the required donation from US$250,000 to US$150,000 for a single applicant.

The media outlet had been reporting that an approval letter regarding one of Savory’s clients, purportedly sent by the CIU last year to a local authorised agent, has been denied by both the CIU and the local agent, leading to the inescapable conclusion that it had been forged, probably using a genuine letter as a template.

Savory, along with other marketing agents against whom no action has yet been taken, has also been involved in promoting the St Kitts and Nevis CBI programme at illegal discounts.

Caribbean New Now reported that after weeks of in

action and denial, at a meeting in Dubai in January with citizenship agents, St Kitts and Nevis foreign minister and premier of Nevis, Mark Brantley, confirmed that local police have launched a full investigation into the use of forged documents in connection with the country’s CBI programme.

However, it has taken another two months for any effective sanctions to be applied to just one of the offending marketing agents.

According to industry sources, there are numerous questionable instances where citizenship applicants have been diverted from the St Kitts and Nevis government’s Hurricane Relief/Sustainable Growth Funds into real estate developments that will never actually be completed, thereby depriving the St Kitts and Nevis economy of much needed investment and instead benefiting unscrupulous marketing agents and local developers.

The failure on the part of the CIU to take any meaningful action in this respect led to widespread speculation that St Kitts and Nevis government officials were personally involved in what appeared to be systematic fraud in the CBI programme.

It is not known at this time whether or not further action is planned against other marketing agents and/or local developers or whether steps will be taken to regularise questionable applications and approvals.

Given the consistent failure on the part of the CIU to respond substantively to requests for information in this respect, the situation is likely to remain murky at best.