Chinese Fraudster Daren Li’s St Kitts and Nevis' passport was deactivated: Reports

St Kitts and Nevis reportedly deactivated the passport of Daren Li, a Chinese national involved in a money laundering scam.

As per sources close to the Government, the authorities took action after Daren Li, also known as Davon, was charged with financial crimes earlier this year.

The 41-year-old mainland China-born Li is now facing 20 years in the US prison for laundering millions of dollars through cryptocurrency scams. He pleaded guilty in a Californian courtroom earlier on Tuesday morning for the “pig butchering scam”.

Li is also a dual citizen of China, St Kitts and Nevis, and a resident of Cambodia and the United Arab Emirates.

According to the court documents, he admitted of conspiring with others to launder the funds and communicated with his co-conspirators through encrypted messaging services.

The deactivation of Daren Li’s St Kitts and Nevis passport again proved the rigorous checks of the Federation on its CBI citizens.

Notably, as per his St Kitts and Nevis passport document spreading online, it was issued way back in 2020 under the administration of Team Unity led government.

However, in most recently, St Kitts and Nevis has made several historic as well as notable changes to it’s citizenship by investment programme, including establishing the CIU as a body corporate.

Besides this, St Kitts and Nevis led the historic Memorundum of Association to set a minimum investment threshold for CBI Programme. The massive move allowed other Caribbean CBI jurisdictions to come together to strengthen the CBI Programmes.

St Kitts and Nevis have already implemented stringent application procedures which include thorough due diligence and background checks to vet individuals seeking for alternative citizenship through the CBI programme.

The Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) is responsible for processing applications and conducting due diligence checks on each applicant. 

Moreover, just recently, the Federation made it mandatory for applicants and their dependents over sixteen to undergo mandatory interview procedures. The interviews are carried out before the processing of the application starts.