Toxic Passports: When Citizenship-By-Investment Programs Corrode Democratic Governance. The Case of the Anglophone Caribbean.

Citizenship-by-Investment (CBI) programs have become an important source of state revenue in many countries of the Anglophone Caribbean. However, putting nationality up for sale not only brings in owners of dubious wealth and its potential consequences. Studying the Anglophone Caribbean island states, the paper shows that the business of selling national passports has also had toxic effects on the quality of democratic governance in these countries. As CBI is an essentially rent-seeking activity, its brokers depend on close and often intransparent ties to government. In particular, the leading company in the global CBI market has become an important actor in Caribbean politics, bringing in Cambridge Analytica / SCL to run smear & fake campaigns in national elections which have undermined demcoratic standards and profoundly changed the political culture in these Commonwealth countries.