The article states that between the 1st quarter 0f 2022 to 1st quarter of 2023 the number of investors (at Secret Bay Resort) grew from 86 -159 – 85 % increase. In our local interpretation 73 passports sold and at an average of $200K per pop that comes up to roughly $14.7 Million invested in Secret Bay.

It was also stated that the residences (meaning CBI investors/ passport buyers) at Secret Bay is the only CBI project in the Caribbean region paying a consistent rate of return on investments to it’s CBI investors. To the unsuspecting reader – The Secret Bay Resort is on the high-performance bar.  

The proprietor of the Secret Bay resort Gregor Nassief is quoted in the article as saying “We are truly grateful to our investors and appreciate the commitment of our resort management and development team that have allowed Secret Bay to achieve this level of performance and growth. We are hopeful and excited about the future and will continue to focus on the long-term success of the business.”   

For those of us who will not be fooled by these CBI propagandists, right off the bat we all know that this Secret Bay Resort bravado is all Malachi. As a matter of fact, last year one of the CBI promoters also wrote a similar article promoting the high-level economic performance of the Anichi Hotel. In the haste to cash in on the irreputable passport sales promotion someone forgot to tell the writer who may have been sitting on a computer in Dubai or India that the Anichi Hotel is incomplete and is in reality the site of an aborted construction project, a project flanked by crimes of money laundering among government officials their friends and senior lawyers.

One has to wonder whether Gregor Nassief really sold 74 CBI passports between Jan 2022 and January 2023, and did he really made the statement that was quoted in the article. If he did then he owes the people of Dominica an explanation because as it stands within the past few weeks the Secret Bay Resort sent home about 30 workers. Considering the size of the Resort this is quite significant. We assume that this is about 70-75% of the staff but even more jarring this is 30 more people out of a job in Dominica’s crippling economy. 

MiTC spoke to a few of the layoff workers and from all indication the resort has been underperforming. We understand that the resort had been running allegedly on an average of one guest per month. According to a few of the former staff members the kitchen had been shut down for a while and very much like the Kempinski Hotel a defoliated space. Another reason to question the validity of those many CBI hotel projects.

Seriously, we take no pleasure in reporting on this matter because it is indeed heartbreaking that 30 more Dominicans have been added to the massive unemployment statistics in Dominica and 30 more families deceived by an unreliable CBI hotel economy.

We should not forget that Gregor Nassief once opined words to the effect that we the citizens have no right to ask about our passport money. He basically expressed those feelings in a response letter to Sean Douglas who had concerns about the use of the CBI funds. Maybe we should ask him then - Sir based on the poor governance and a severely broken economy would you have invested $14 Million of your own money in a hotel project in Dominica.   

If the CBI promoters are right, in under one year Gregor Nassief would have received an estimated $14.7 Million of investor money through the CBI program but 30 workers were sent home from the resort. It is only fair to ask Gregor Nassief  and frankly the government of Dominica – After the hotels are built and in operation why do the CBI hotel developers continue to sell CBI shares/passports and where do the funds go to?  

In the words of the famous "Blue Blue ' on Q95 - Inquiring minds want to know   

It seems like all how we turn it’s just the selected few benefiting from the CBI program in perpetuity while the people continue to swim deeper into poverty.