Thread by @MsMariaT

"But the investment programs have also proved popular with a Who’s Who of fugitives and fraudsters. Convicted felons Paul Bilzerian [Dan Bilzerian's dad] and Roger Ver gave up their U.S. citizenship and now use Saint Kitts passports."

https://twitter.com/annmarlowe/status/1013506651314442242

"Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the illicit marketplace Silk Road, now appealing a life sentence handed down by a U.S. court, was attempting to obtain Dominica citizenship when he was arrested." #Corruption #CitizenshipForCash #EB5Visas

"JOHN KELLY, then Marine Corps general and current White House chief of staff, said the passport programs “COULD BE EXPLOITED BY CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS, or other nefarious actors.” #EB5Visas

Hmm, funny-he doesn't talk much about the program Trump uses to fill his properties now.

"In an interview with Fast Company, Hughes said that Kalin—a wiry Swiss economic citizenship impresario known as “the PASSPORT KING”—was “HEAVILY INVOLVED” in the SCL CAMPAIGNS."

"As part of the partnership...the Henley CEO would supply financing from unknown investors, provide talking pts for candidates, and discuss w/ them various development projects they could expect once in power. "

THINK REPUBLICANS DON'T DO THIS?

"During all of the campaigns, according to the former SCL employee, Alexander Nix deployed the same kind of underhanded tactics that the future Cambridge Analytica CEO would later brag about to an undercover reporter for Channel 4 News...."

"Hughes, who said he refused to be involved in Nix’s techniques, decided to leave the company after the CEO’s methods began to imperil the safety of his on-the-ground FOREIGN CAMPAIGN STAFF. “I said to him, ‘YOU'RE GOING TO GET SOMEONE KILLED.”

"...as part of its citizenship-by-investment business, Henley “naturally sometimes also interacts with political leaders of opposition parties that are interested in the topic of investment migration for the purpose of their economic-policy agendas.”

"Under questioning from British lawmakers last month, Nix acknowledged that he & Kalin had a “relationship” during SCL’s campaigning in the Caribbean, and that “he may well have made contribs towards the election campaigns.”

THIS HAPPENED HERE. GRASSLEY COMPLAINED TO TRUMP.

"Harris encountered SCL’s work in 2015, when he was running for ofc against Denzil Douglas on a pledge to reform the country’s passport program: Nix, according to a report in the Guardian, TURNED A TEAM OF ISRAELI HACKERS to obtain the candidate’s priv emails & medical records.👀

"Harris won that election, and amid global scrutiny of the country’s citizenship investor program, Henley and Partners was dismissed as the country’s main passport seller."

"Despite its boasts of having never lost an election, SCL often lost in the Caribbean. The elections firm worked on unsuccessful political campaigns in Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, and Antigua and Barbuda, where it was accused of spreading DELIBERATELY FALSE STORIES."

Classy op.

"...Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves complained that SCL had ILLEGALLY BROUGHT IN FOREIGNERS ON TOURIST VISAS to work as political consultants, an accusation echoed in the recent firestorm over Cambridge Analytica’s work for Donald Trump." 💥💥💥

"The fourth-term prime minister—who is alone among the region’s heads of state in resisting citizenship-by-investment programs—also accused foreign actors of spreading a barrage of false stories about him during the campaign."

"According to an SCL presentation...the firm had launched a “targeted digital attack” against Gonsalves. “Within 3 wks every single reference to him...referred to the candidate’s horrific track record of corruption, coercion, rape allegations, and victimization,”

SOUND FAMILIAR?

"Nix’s shady, under-the-radar tactics, he said, often left him and SCL’s team of on-the-ground campaign workers in danger. “He’d come in...and then fly out and leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces, which left us in a very compromised and sometimes dangerous position.”

"...Is it acceptable to secretly guide elections WITH SECRET MONEY and secret guidance in small countries [AND LARGE] and overturn the democratic process? Whether or not that’s criminal action or whether or not that’s unethical action, it certainly needs to be investigated.”

Remember I told you about the Republican senators - like GOODLATTE - that seemed to be very cozy w/the Russian EB-5 lawyer from Rudy's old firm? #CitizenshipForCash, and #DarkCampaignMoney.

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/950427419764125696

"When reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bombing in Malta in Oct, she’d been investigating her country’s own controversial passport sales, and examining links between the government of PM Joseph Muscat and Henley & Partners. "

F*CK. REPORTERS KILLED OVER THIS!

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1004411378692644864

"The DAMAGE caused to Malta by the SALE OF CITIZENSHIP is unquantifiable,” Caruana Galizia wrote on her blog about the country’s so-called golden visas. “Malta is not St. Kitts & Nevis. It is interlocked with the rest of the EU.”

Mobligarchs into EU via Malta.

"At the time of her murder...Galizia was facing dozens of defamation lawsuits, including from Henley,...Malta’s Pilatus Bank, Ali Sadr Hasheminejad. The son of one of Iran’s richest men...has been linked to MONEY LAUNDERING AND CORRUPT ACTS w/officials in the PM’s inner circle.

The Mobligarch above...

"He was also one of Henley’s most prominent customers: the firm helped him secure a Saint Kitts passport in 2009."

HOLY SHIT. THIS MOBLIGARCH, HE WAS ARRESTED IN U.S.A:

"When federal agents arrested him [Ali Sadr Hasheminejad] in March at a Washington, D.C. airport on charges of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran, he was carrying FOUR PASSPORTS."

"Since Henley lost its position as the primary agent for marketing Dominica and Saint Kitts passports, another London-based citizenship firm called CS Global Partners has risen in its place. FOUNDED AND LED BY A FORMER ATTY AT HENLEY AND PARTNERS..."

#VisaScamHydra 😠

" CS Global is said to have been financed in part by a British-Indian investor named Dev Bath. Bath, who served as a director at the firm for over a year, remains a consultant to the company. His LinkedIn profile DOESN'T MENTION CS Global," 🙄🚩🚩🚩

"His LinkedIn profile doesn’t mention CS Global, and describes him only by his title, “Special Representative of St. Kitts and Nevis,” which furnishes him w/a diplomatic passport to the country....Bath has also hired Lanny J. Davis..."

SMHRN...

Lanny Davis gone straight to the DARKSIDE ya'll. He reps FIRTASH:

chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoin…

"Last yr, Davis’s lobbying work on behalf of Saint Kitts raised eyebrows in Parliament, particularly around the question of who paid him and his law firm more than $96,000. His svcs—lobbying U.S. and Canadian authorities to lift their restrictions on the country’s passports..."

Now Davis says he's no longer repping CS Global/Dev Bath:

"In an email to Fast Company, Davis said he had ceased representing Bath and Saint Kitts over a year ago."

"In recent months, one of Bath’s longtime business partners has thrust the country into a fresh storm of BRIBERY ALLEGATIONS."

#CitizenshipForCash #DarkCampaignMoney

""Peter Singh Virdee, a property magnate also of British-Indian descent, had sought to secure solar energy contracts in the Caribbean as part of a renewable energy venture. In one 2016 phone call, disclosed in a British court in May, Virdee described to an assoc the need to..."

"...entertain the prime minister of Saint Kitts and his entourage in London that evening, “so be ready for a big bill.” In another conversation, Virdee, who also holds an Antiguan passport, said that Saint Kitts’s PRIME MINISTER ASKED FOR A WATCH AND A PAIR OF SHOES". 🙄

"the U.K.’s Nat'l Crime Agency stated that “the claimants were READY AND WILLING TO PAY BRIBES, and had given at least one gift to a Caribbean politician.” Virdee, who was arrested in 1/17 at Heathrow Airport on...charges of a plot to evade millions...has denied any wrongdoing."

"Bath and CS Global haven't been linked to the allegations surrounding Virdee. But when asked about Virdee’s assoc w/Bath and Saint Kitts...the PM's ofc said that “a historical business relationship that involves CS Global and the country’s CBI program” is..."under review.”

Opposition leader: "“As a small Caribbean nation, we are fast losing our reputation,” he said in a recent address, “and the lifeblood of this country is being sucked from it as CORRUPTION RUNS AMOK, and there seems to be a return of the image of Devil’s Island.”

SAD.

"The governments of the Caribbean and the passport firms insist they have stepped up their reviews of applicants and closed loopholes. (In one notorious instance, Saint Kitts had to RECALL 5,000 PASSPORTS,"

"David Jessop, former head president of the London-based nonprofit Caribbean Council, wrote last November that growing competition among the citizenship-by-investment programs risked “becoming a DANGEROUS RACE TO THE BOTTOM.”

"Last yr, as part of efforts to raise money to rebuild infrastructure heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria, some Carib nations began to drastically cut their passport fees. In Dominica, Antigua, Barbuda, & Grenada, an investor passport can now be obtained thru a $100K donation..."

This is so sad, because these islands desperately need the money. What a spot to be in. 😳😞

"Paolo Zampolli [Melania's you know-what-ya'll!], a businessman who holds an honorary ambassadorship to the U.N. from Dominica–and who takes credit for introducing Trump to Melania Knauss in 1998–has also claimed some credit for kickstarting this newer passport option: ...."

"[Zampollini] introduced Dominica’s ambassador TO THE U.S. to the head of DUBAI-BASED Range Developments, a property firm that now markets the real estate investment program in Dominica and Saint Kitts.)"

Dubai:

https://twitter.com/Trump/status/893841118328172544

KimK's fam - with the school that prepares young women to ???? - in Trump Tower, and Dubai:

https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1002010691706929152

I'm literally getting sick to my stomach reading this....

"In February 2017, as revelations emerged that the government had sold diplomatic passports to ALLEGED CRIMINALS, public frustration over the passport sales boiled over into violence. "

" In April, Dominica appointed Nuri Katz as its ambassador to the Russian Federation, whom a government press release identifies as “a founding member of a number of businesses in Canada, Russia, and Ukraine.”

"The govt’s announcement about his appointment, however, does not mention his occupation, which suggests a conflict of interest: Katz is also president of Apex Capital, another PROMINENT PASSPORT FIRM."

F*CK!!!! 🤦🏽‍♀️

I skipped a bit throughout. If you'd like to read this piece of superb investigative journalism by @annmarlowe in it's entirety, here's the link back to it:

fastcompany.com/40571052/how-c…

@ninaandtito @JamesFourM 👆🏽👆🏽👆🏽Ali Sadr Hasheminejad. Iran sanctions evader, arrested 3/18.