From Caribbean360

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, CMC – The St. Kitts-Nevis government says while it has not been officially informed by the United States of an investigation into how three Iranians had in their possessions passports of the twin island Federation, it is not worried over the probe.

“We haven’t been informed officially that this is happening and we don’t see anything unusual about this. Several persons, several citizens from several countries across the world occasionally are the subjects of investigations. So there is nothing unusual here,” Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas said.

Opposition politicians claim that the investigations are threatening the St. Kitts Nevis Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP), but Prime Minister Douglas said “it does not damage our programme at all.

“If that person or those persons were already on a watch list and they were able to obtain our citizenship then that is something you question…or if they are subject to an investigation without necessarily an offence being committed then we consider that to be quite normal and that in anyway should not hurt our citizenship by investment programme,” he said.

Dr. Douglas said he wanted to emphasise that the CIP is “one of the oldest in the world, it is the most credible to date in the world, it is the leading programme globally and we could not have attracted these accolades if there wasn’t something that we were doing that wasn’t right.

“And so from time totime you do have these situations where a citizen of St. Kitts-Nevis is being investigated,” Dr. Douglas said.

But former government minister and activists Dwyer Astapahn disagrees, saying “the trouble for me is while we are ….little fishes in the ocean we need particularly to be careful that we don’t get painted with the same brush and the people of this country are not jeopardized as a result”.

Astaphan speaking on WINN FM radio, said the three Iranians are “part of a bigger picture that people at present understand.”

The disclosure that Washington is investigating the three Iranians comes a few months after another Iranian was denied entry into Canada using a St. Kitts Nevis diplomatic passport.

The Iranian, Alizeera Moghadhan, reportedly told immigration authorities that he paid one million dollars for the passport.

But Dr. Douglas maintained that anyone on a watch list of the United states, the European Union or the United Nations would not qualify for a local passport under the CIP.

“The point I am trying to make is that no one who has that intention…will come to St. Kitts and Nevis in order to sue that as a means of getting into the United States to do business,” he added.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/news/st-kitts-defends-citizenship-by-investment-programme-following-us-probe#ixzz30NhEzRgB