Funds from the Citizenship by Investment Programme (CIP) were used to pay for health insurance for the wife of Prime Minister Gaston Browne, Leader of the Opposition Jamale Pringle has disclosed. A revelation that left Straight Talk host Jason Mannix dumbfounded.
“It was not life insurance… it was the health insurance,” MP Pringle said on Monday night’s edition of the Progressive 107.3 FM programme, pointing out that parliamentarians already have an insurance policy. Asked what the additional coverage was for, he replied that he did not know, "but I know it was paid out of the CIP.”
During the broadcast, MP Pringle also told listeners that CIP money has been used to cover pensions and to pay workers on the government’s beautification programme who cut the roadsides. The Opposition Leader said the public is entitled to “a full account” of the programme’s spending.
“If we get an audited statement, then we would know for sure where all those monies went,” Mannix observed, “and then we could decide — well, why wasn’t the money placed spent appropriately?”
A Decade Without an Audit
No recent audited statement exists. PM Browne — who, as Prime Minister, holds direct responsibility for the Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) — confessed “I don’t know” in Parliament when Barbuda MP Trevor Walker asked when the unit was last audited. REAL News has reported that the CIU’s accounts have gone unaudited for a decade, following the repeal of the statutory audit requirement in 2016 — a record that led UPP Senator Jonathan Wehner to brand the administration “co-conspirators in the assassination of the reputation of the passport of Antigua and Barbuda.”
Monday night’s disclosure adds fuel to the Opposition’s push for oversight of the CIP. Opposition Senator Jonathan Wehner has long called for a joint parliamentary select committee with subpoena powers over the CIU, while Senator Malaka Parker has called for CBI funds to be “ring-fenced” and the senator used the EU’s own report to question the programme’s due diligence.
With CIP receipts reportedly running at less than half of projections in the national budgets, Mannix asked whether citizens are now in for additional taxes to cover the shortfalls — a question with bite for households already strained by the cost of living. MP Pringle has previously urged a three-month consumption tax reduction, declaring that “families are suffering”.
