It had to happen. One of the alleged fraudsters involved in an EB-5 scandal in the United States has also purchased an additional citizenship in another nation.
We reported a few days ago that Charles Liu and his wife, Lisa Wang, were exposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as diverters of $18 million in EB-5 investments involving a cancer treatment center in Southern California. They sent the money to their own bank accounts and to three companies in China rather than building the medical center.
It now turns out that Liu, before the SEC's move, had already purchased a citizenship from Grenada, the little ex-British island we invaded during the Reagan administration. They call their equivalent of our EB-5 program "citizenship by investment" (CBI); several other island nations have similar programs.
Irritatingly, neither the SEC complaint nor any of the press coverage describes, in this immigration-related case, the immigration status of Liu and Wang. SEC says he is a "resident of Laguna Niguel, California" as is she. The form that Liu used when applying for Homeland Security permission to run a regional center (the I-924) does not ask about the civil status of the person applying for the center. I would think it would be a perfectly legitimate question.
One Caribbean newspaper reported that the government of Grenada had said in the blandest of terms, following the SEC announcement: "Through our diplomatic channels, the Government of Grenada continues to monitor the situation, to communicate with all diplomatic and other sources, and continues to fully engage mutual cooperation with all the parties concerned."
Another, earlier report said that Liu is already deeply embedded in that nation's diplomatic channels as he is the commercial attaché in the little nation's Beijing embassy. This is presumably a part-time, probably unpaid position, as the incumbent is, according to SEC, living in yet a third country, the United States.
There are no indications as of this writing that anything has gone wrong with the island investment.
So we have what appears to be a Chinese national who has already purchased one additional citizenship, and has secured what appears to be a diplomatic post from his new nation, putting together a company which will promote tourism in Grenada while simultaneously seeking to sell American green cards to Chinese investors by falsely promising to build a cancer treatment center in the United States.
Charles Liu is just one example of the interesting people who are attracted to our EB-5 program.