Dominica

The massive financial scam being committed in Grenada by Canadian and American crooks has reached new levels of farce after the island's government announced that it had investigated - and cleared - the First International Bank of Grenada of any wrongdoing. Grenadian Prime Minister Keith Mitchell gave the bank a clean bill of health at a press conference held on July 23 and attended by local journalists.

The First International Bank of Grenada and the sham insurer known as IDIC have launched an international pyramid scheme as the latest phase of their plan to part investors from their money. There is also concern that FIBG may have become involved in stock manipulation involving a Florida-registered penny stock firm that trades on the NASDAQ over-the-counter market.

Dominica-licensed Overseas Development Bank & Trust Ltd., which is run by John E. Greaves in Antigua, appears to be in financial trouble.Three separate judgments for a total of US$1.24 million were entered against the bank on January 29, 1999 by the High Court of Justice in Dominica.

The First International Bank of Grenada, the International Deposit Insurance Corporation and the World Investors Stock Exchange this month failed in their bid to obtain a court injunction preventing Offshore Alert from continuing to report on their fraudulent activities.Attorneys representing these entities filed hundreds of pages of documents at the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in an effort to obtain an emergency injunction preventing Offshore Alert from continuing to report on their dubious activities.

Amended Emergency Motion for Preliminary Injunction in First International Bank of Grenada Ltd., International Depositors' Reinsurance Corporation Ltd., doing business as IDIC; and World Investors' Stock Exchange v. David Marchant and Offshore Business News & Research, Inc. at the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Offshore Alert's story about the banking/insurance scam that appeared in last month's edition of the newsletter has created quite a stir in the Caribbean. Several newspapers in the region followed up on the scandal, including those in Nevis, St. Vincent and Bermuda, and we received requests for assistance from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the the FBI.

Libel Complaint in First International Bank of Grenada Ltd., of Grenada; International Depositors' Reinsurance Corporation, Ltd., doing business as IDIC, of Nevis, and World Investors' Stock Exchange, of Grenada v. David Marchant and Offshore Business News & Research, Inc. at the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Letter to the Editor from Gerald Burton threatening to sue OffshoreAlert for libel on behalf of his client, IDIC, a fraudulently-operated offshore 'insurer'.

Further information has come our way this month that sheds more light on the collapse of American International Bank and the fiasco that ensued after the same people who caused its problems attempted to transfer the business into another entity they controlled. It seems that American businessman William W. Cooper and his wife, who co-owned AIB, closed down the bank at the end of December, 1997 and transferred its business on January 2 to a new Antigua-registered entity called Overseas Development Bank Ltd.

The Caribbean Hotel Association Insurance Company Ltd., which hit financial trouble soon after it started, has stopped writing new business after just two and a half years in business. The news comes after many member countries of the Caribbean Hotel Association, for whom the company was specifically set up to insure, failed to put their money where their mouths were and buy insurance from CHAIC.

Already home to many of the world's phone sex companies, the Dominican Republic has now firmly established itself as the domicile of choice for another controversial area of offshore business and one of the fastest-growing - gambling via ‘800' telephone numbers and over the internet.With annual licences running from $20,000 to $100,000, several Caribbean islands are looking to the sector as a lucrative revenue-earner.