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Reports from Grenada indicate that there are additional foreign nationals who have purchased illegal Diplomatic passports, from Government officials, and are using them to circumvent customs & immigration officers at international borders, in violation of the Vienna Convention, a binding United Nations treaty, and may be employing those privileged documents to facilitate the commission of financial crime. An investigative article, by a local Grenadian newspaper, The New Today, detailed the story.
A Pakistani national, Fahad Sultan Ahmed, residing in the United Kingdom, reportedly obtained a Grenada diplomatic passport two years ago, during the present administration of the reigning New National Party. He is not named in any official diplomatic capacity at the Grenada High Commission in London, nor does he hold any other portfolio or assignment, anywhere, for Grenada. His Pakistani passport appears at the beginning of this article, though it is not know under what name he acquired the Grenada diplomatic passport.
Ahmed is apparently a Pakistani businessman residing in the UK, by virtue of a visa reportedly obtained for him by Mishcon De Reya LLP, which is the law firm that represents Henley & Partners Ltd. Regular readers of this blog will recall that it was a Henley & Partners officer that Grenada CIP Chairman Kaisha Ince stated she was going to contact, to get one of our recent articles, (which detailed the efforts of a Ukrainian national to also obtain a Grenada passport) removed from the Internet. That same conversation, to which the Prime Minister, Keith Mitchell, was a party, indicated that the PM feared the news would damage his reelection chances.
Keith Mitchell ( photo courtesy The New Today)
All efforts to obtain comments, or denials, from the Government of Grenada, regarding the existence of the Ahmed diplomatic passport, have reportedly been ignored. The question remains: just how many Grenada diplomatic passports have been sold to foreign nationals ? The answer will affect how international banks treat Grenada passport holders, and large financial transactions originating from there, and how Country Risk on Grenada is assessed.
Chronicles of Monte Friesner - Financial Crime Analyst
Contributed by Kenneth Rijock - Financial Crime Consultant
