Dominica revokes local citizenship for Iranian national

Under pressure from the U.S. and other Western nations to halt the sale of local passports and citizenship, Dominican authorities revoked an Iranian national’s citizenship after determining he provided false information in his original application.

Abolfazl Shamkhani lost his citizenship and passport rights in the Eastern Caribbean nation in late March after authorities found false information on his “golden passports” application. Local media identified him as the younger son of slain Iranian government advisor Ali Shamkhani.

A review of his application by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) accused Shamkhani of applying for citizenship under the Citizenship by Investment Program (CBI) as Sami Hayek rather than in his original name.

Once discovered, authorities swiftly revoked all his local entitlements. Dominica Online newspaper reported this week that this latest revocation marks only the second ever under the CIP program. Ironically, authorities first revoked his older brother Hossein’s citizenship in August of last year after learning that Hossein had applied for and obtained local rights under the name Hugo Hayek.

The moves come as Dominica works to restore the Trump administration’s confidence that it can properly scrutinize applicants’ backgrounds for the scheme, which authorities call a lifeline revenue earner for development projects.

Late last year, the State Department suspended issuance of visitor and non-immigrant visas for Dominicans and Antiguans, citing security concerns about foreigners traveling on local passports through the investment-for-passports scheme.

In all, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit’s administration revoked nearly 70 such passports in the past two years, responding to pressure from the U.S. and the European Union. Meanwhile, the EU reimposed visa requirements on several Caribbean Community nations, claiming that golden passport holders paid the minimum fee of $100,000 mainly to enter the union and other destinations visa-free.

In fact, the paper stated that the authorities have suspended all applications by Iranian nationals, except for those who have not lived in Iran for a decade, own no assets there, and conduct no business in Iran.

Meanwhile, PM Skerrit has played up the need to address U.S. and EU concerns about the security of the CIP program, saying his administration is depending on a mid-year review of the visa suspensions to restore travel rights for ordinary citizens. He said the issue was discussed in-depth with Secretary Marco Rubio in St. Kitts in late February.

“He made it clear to us this was a temporary measure and that they were doing internal reviews and so on. And he was pressed for a time frame, and he intimated that he didn’t want to hold on to that, but that there will be a review sometime in June of this year of the actions taken under the proclamation. I can also tell you that every week, our ambassador to the United States meets with the State Department on our bilateral and multilateral issues. And I receive reports of this from the ambassador every week. And of course, central to this is the visa restrictions by the United States of America,” he said.

International security officials have accused the two brothers of running ghost schemes to help finance the Iranian regime.