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Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Meet Ambassador Jonathan Brown

As the focus continues on Dominica's mysterious diplomatic corps, I made contact with one of our ambassadors, Jonathan Seeker Reed Brown. Never heard of him? Don't be embarrassed, you're not the only one.

Ambassador Brown is a fellow UK citizen who has been residing in Florida for several years. He holds the title of Ambassador-at-Large but exactly what he has done for Dominica in the intervening years since he has acquired his diplomatic passport is a great mystery. How he came to be in possession of our diplomatic passport is an open question and Ambassador Brown refuses to tell us how he came to be in possession of it.

Born in June 1967 in Cumbria, UK, Jonathan Brown formed a smoked fish company called Grants Smokehouse in 1985. In 1996 he moved the United States to take over a failed seafood company in Pennsylvania which he restarted as Macknight Smoked Foods. In 1997 Macknights opened a factory in Florida, which is located in the Aventura neighbourhood north of Miami. Ambassador Brown currently resides in Coral Gables.

I reached out to Ambassador Brown on January 6th to get a sense as to what he does for Dominica in his capacity as Ambassador-at-Large. I emailed him at his official ambassadorial email address, found on his website www.ambassadortodominica.com, as well as his official business email address at Macknight Smoked Foods. He replied to me using his business email address.

Mr. Brown stated to me in his email that he is in the process of establishing a 3,000 sq.ft. office on Brickell Key in Miami, which has already cost him over $2 million. The office is to serve as a trade and consular office and he hopes to "make it a place all Dominicans can come to if they have any problems or need help while in Florida". From his email, we knew Mr. Brown was lying.

For those who do not know, Brickell Key is a small island just south of downtown Miami at the mouth of the Miami river that is home to a highly exclusive primarily residential community. Besides the obvious question as to why would Mr. Brown spend his own money to establish an office that caters to Dominicans on Brickell Key, the more troubling question is this; assuming that what he says has some truth to it, how is it possible for this individual to establish a Dominica Trade and Consular office, which would take on the appearance of being a functional Dominica government outpost, without the knowledge of the very people the office is supposed to serve?

Mr. Brown touted his work in developing the Amanyara Resort in the Turks & Caicos Islands (www.aman.com/resorts/amanyara). The Amanyara is resort development that sells villas to wealthy individuals, a project identical to the Cabrits Resort in Portsmouth and the new Jungle Bay in Soufriere. Which begs the question; is Mr. Brown a passport seller?

Mr. Brown's last correspondence to me before he cut off communication was that he will be in Dominica in April of this year with officials of Trader Joe's, a large American grocery chain, ostensibly to sign a deal to source product for I presume, their 460 stores across the United States. Is anyone on Dominica aware of such a potential windfall? Do the farmers know that one of Mr. Skerrit's ambassadors is about to deliver manna from heaven?

To view the emails between me and Ambassador Brown, click this image link:






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1 comment :

  1. This peice though trying to be informative and an eye opener fails at that simply because it's seems more on the edge of paranoia more than anything else...

    ReplyDelete

 
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