“CIU GETS FRESH START AT BEING NUMBER 1”
Today marks an important day in the reform and restructuring of the Citizenship by Investment Unit in St Kitts and Nevis.
Today we give a fresh start to:
• An enhanced CIU
• Better customer services
• Advanced management information systems which is available to assist service providers 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. This case management system is the only one of its kind in use in the region.
Today we commit to a pathway to do what we are doing the best way we can. We want to involve all interested parties in doing their best.
The service providers are being urged to do a better job at previewing and reviewing their applications and establishing their own mechanism for determining the quality of the applicant which they are submitting for consideration. At this time there are 71 files within the Unit approved and ready to go but no Memorandum of Transfers have been received from Service Providers. As a result they cannot be further processed. Service Providers are at fault, not the Unit, yet invariably the Unit gets the blame.
We have moved to address the situation where the stakeholder who has escrow funds and utilizes them in ways not intended. The consequence is that person is therefore unable to transfer funds to CIU to facilitate complete processing of applications. We have already put for first reading a Bill relating to escrow entitled “The St Christopher and Nevis Citizenship (CBI Escrow Accounts) Bill”. This will hold escrow holders to account, protect the investor and add credibility to the programme.
Developers who build inferior properties that add no enduring value to our landscape, or seascape are not in sync with the beauty and unique attributes that make the physicality of St Kitts and Nevis alluring. We want a fresh start with developments of awesome aesthetic beauty that transform our spatial lay out by their share presence, design, sturdy structure, colour scheme and inherent quality.
What Does Our St Kitts and Nevis Citizenship Mean?
We want our Citizenship Programme to be more than a passport exchange programme. It is our unique way as a small country, of meeting the challenges of development at this juncture, by sharing our unique country, its culture, its vast potential to offer more than a serene, tranquil and beautiful get-away to nationals of other countries. This is a get-away to a paradise island, not a get-away from jail or corruption. More than a get-away, we offer a home and alternative citizenship to others. We will not chance the reputation of St Kitts and Nevis, for a mess of potage monetized at US $250,000 or US $450,000. Citizenship is not for sale like black pudding and goat water on a weekend.
It is our sacred and unique identity to the jurisdiction with which we most naturally align and are allied. It is part of our enduring connection to our land, our sea, our fellow citizens and culture.
It is what makes our hearts sing the sweet refrain even when our mouths are closed. “Of all the lands be theyeast or west, we love our land St Kitts and Nevis the best”.
I am indeed grateful that many have caught on to this more ennobling view of our Citizenship Programme. And we welcome the discerning investor with an enduring interest in making St Kitts and Nevis the best place to live. We welcome the investor who wants to contribute to our education system, to enhancing our health care and keep St Kitts and Nevis safe, secure and prosperous.
I am grateful for the support of many people. I will not enumerate all who have helped and some whom I name may not particularly prefer this reference but my mind and heart are at a place of gratitude and so I ask that you oblige me at least this once:
(i) Ambassador Constance Mitcham
(ii) Mrs Shawna Lake
(iii) MrFaron Lawrence
(iv) Ms Natalie John
(v) Mr John Zuliani
(vi) Mr Anthony Haiden
(vii) The Range
(viii) C S Global
(ix) Scott Caines
(x) Henley and Partners
Your constructive support, your free advice, and constructive recommendations help made a difference.
Not all stood strong when the going got tough. Some took the easy way out to Antigua, only to come back home to beautiful St Kitts and Nevis, with the oldest and the best citizenship programme. Such are the vicissitudes of life. We want all of you to know that we appreciate your contribution. We need you now and we need you fully committed to partner with us.
Today we welcome all our service providers, developers and agents, to a new sense of activism, and positivism on behalf of St Kitts and Nevis.
Inspite the cries of many that the CIU would not survive. I am in a position to report that it is surviving and doing reasonably well in the face of:
1. The lost of the Canadian visa free access in November 2014, the consequence of this was brutal for market in general, and the Chinese market in particular. In May 2014, the U. S. Advisory on our CIU was a wake up call that all was not well and the inability of the by gone administration to reform the programme for better. Six months later Canada followed. The UK and Europe were under pressure to follow suit. Thankfully we acted to recalibrate relations with USA, UK, EU.
2. Increase competition from Antigua and Barbuda (which has Canadian visa free status and shengen visa free entry). Not only did Antigua and Barbuda enter the market but it entered at highly discounted prices for its processing and other fees. Grenada too is offering a similar CBI Programme. Dominica was in the same market, and St Lucia has now enjoined. All of our competitors offered a cheaper product than we do.
3. The CIU had outgrown itself and organizational reform and restructuring were imperative. One of the major revenue earner of the country at the end of 2014 was under staffed, lacking in training and more lacking in a culture of excellent customer service. We have rectified this. The CIU is better organized and better managed, thanks to our acting on the twenty plus reforms presented by IPSA.
The results are:
i) We are restoring trust and confidence. In the last eight months not one public embarrassment on the Programme. Difficulties are addressed through quiet diplomacy;
ii) New management at our CIU in Eirate McCall, Denise Davis, Rapha Bailey, Lisa Farrell, Orin Roberts, Tamara O’Flaherty and others, and there is an obvious difference in quality of interaction and engagement between CIU and its clients;
Our coming here is for you to learn more about a new case management system which if it were to work according to expectations, will help us to be the most efficient processor of citizenship applications not just in the Caribbean but in the World.
I have some preliminary statistics on the performance of the CIU under Team Unity.
Fifty one (51) Service Providers have submitted applications to the Citizenship by Investment Unit for 2015. Among them are CIVIS Consulting Ltd, Grant, Powell and Co., Caribbean Governance Consultants Inc, Henley and Partners Caribbean Ltd and Theodore Hobson and Associates.
Twenty eight of fifty one providers have submitted double digit applications.
Far from dead, we still have one of the best performing CIUs processing more applications per month than our regional competitors and more importantly providing more revenues than any of the other CIUs. This is an outstanding achievement for the Team Unity Government and the success of our reform efforts to date.
We have achieved this success in spite of the clear obstructionist efforts of some. Inspite active encouragement of some developers and service providers to boycott St Kitts and Nevis to shock the programme.
Thank God, though difficult a challenge, we have had enough applications to keep us busy and we are still number one.
For the future we can expect:
1. More discerning applicants. No more Alizeera Moghadam, Porters and Charles Edwards. Only legitimate applicants are welcomed!
2. Greater cooperation with our allies/in the interest of our common obligations to a safer world and to reduce illicit financial activities like money laundering, tax evasion, and terrorism financing to name a few.
3. Other financing options and instruments under our CBI Programme.
4. Reform of the Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation (SIDF) to enhance governance, accountability and transparency.
5. A Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) which is leader in the Industry regionally and globally.
6. Our country diversified to reduce the vulnerability and dependence on CBI inflows.
7. “The oldest and the best as a well earned designation of our CBI
8. Review of criteria and licensing arrangements for service providers, developers and agents
9. Quality assurance mechanism in our real estate option
The future will be consecrated. Our successes to date points to progress ahead. We will not let up on our reform agenda intended to keep our programme always as the best.
I end with a note of reminder. Team Unity is solid in its commitment to St Kitts and Nevis. We will not let our country down. Never again will the ordinary citizens of St Kitts and Nevis lose out on privileges and benefits that they long enjoy such as visa free access to any country as a result of their Government playing foot loose and fancy free with illicit actors in the Citizenship Programme.
Never again will a price be attached to our diplomatic passports nor will we compromise on international best practices in our management of our passports. This is a Team Unity administration and we promise a fresh start and a better way.
Thank You!
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