Gaston Browne defends giving Colombian-Venezuelan money launderer Alex Saab an Antigua and Barbuda diplomatic passport and naming him an economic envoy.
He said that providing the diplomatic credentials was proper and legitimate, and that sometimes people “turn out to be crooks.”
“That was a genuine appointment,” he said, in an Observer article by Algernon Watts.
“At the time, you know, there was no issue on him,” Browne said.
Brown pretended that he learned of Saab’s corruption only after the fact. “There are times when countries do appoint individuals and then they turn out to be crooks.”
This is a lie. Browne’s government issued the passport on 18 November 2014.
- Colombia had been investigating Saab for money laundering between 2004 and 2011.
- December 2012-March 2013: First public reports emerge of Saab’s company Foglocons (Fondo Global de Construcción) under a money laundering investigation in Ecuador in 2013, in which the company signed a fraudulent $685 million housing construction deal with the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela.
- November 2013: Ecuador’s attorney general freezes US$57 million in Foglocons funds.
- November 2014: Gaston Browne’s government gives Saab a diplomatic passport and names him economic envoy.
“The statement goes to the heart of a longstanding issue surrounding Antigua and Barbuda’s use of foreign businessmen as economic envoys, ambassadors and diplomatic passport holders,” Watts writes. “How much scrutiny should take place before the country places its name and diplomatic standing behind an individual?”
Speed of passport raises suspicions
“In Saab’s case, the government did far more than simply give him an honorary title. His Antigua and Barbuda diplomatic passport was issued on 18 November 2014, less than six months after the Browne administration took office,” according to Watts.
“Browne said Saab was brought into a proposed trade arrangement with Venezuela and was expected to participate in a major housing development in Antigua and Barbuda,” says Watts.
Saab’s Foglocons company was a prefabricated housing manufacturer.
Browne “said that, ahead of the appointment, then minister Michael Browne travelled to Venezuela to inspect Saab’s housing operation and subsequently reported positively to Cabinet,” according to Watts
The government later made approximately 100 acres of land available for the project.
According to Browne, roads were cut and several two-storey houses constructed before the initiative stalled.
Strained chronology
“After he got into some issue with the US, we revoked his citizenship and we took back the land,” Browne said.
“By the time Saab received Antigua and Barbuda diplomatic credentials, his business network had already been the subject of a formal money-laundering investigation in Ecuador,” notes Watts.
“Authorities there had examined millions of dollars in transactions linked to Foglocons, alleging major discrepancies between the value of goods purportedly exported to Venezuela and the amounts actually paid to suppliers,” Watts writes.
The Browne government credentialed Saab as the money launderer was building a huge financial empire for Venezuela’s Cartel of the Suns under Nicolas Maduro.
“Antigua and Barbuda’s role in his rise as an international representative remains politically relevant because the government itself selected him and gave him the authority associated with representing the country abroad,” according to Watts.
Now that he’s been caught, Browne says he’ll fix it
Watts describes the compromised Citizenship by Investment Programme.
Browne is now promising greater transparency – only after he was caught.
“I’m giving an undertaking now that I’m gonna process the list of existing diplomats, and we’ll indicate if they’re local Antiguans, if they’re CIP citizens, if they have a passport,” Browne claimed.
But he offered no process or deadline.
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