The political leader of the United Workers Party (UWP), Dr. Thomson Fontaine, has condemned the Dominican government for being caught in bed with cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun. A prominent economist, Fontaine said PM Roosevelt Skerrit is benefiting in some clandestine way by opening up Dominica to the caprices of Sun.
He alleged that the DLP administration deceived Dominicans into believing that Sun was developing a unique cryptocurrency for Dominica, while in actual fact he was using his crypto platform – TRON – to sell Dominica’s citizenship for Chinese investors seeking to evade regulators in China.
Fontaine became more vocal against the Dominican government when the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a damning article alleging that Sun – who is charged by the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) of fraud – is using his TRON cryptocurrency platform together with the Huobi mobile app to enable Chinese citizens trade in cryptocurrencies – by bypassing regulators and restrictions imposed by the Chinese government.
It will be recalled that in 2020, the Chinese government banned trading in cryptocurrencies. So it is an offense to be caught within China trading in cryptos. This development caused the fortunes of Huobi – a digital assets exchange platform – to nosedive (Sun is an advisor with Huobi). The WSJ in its article alleged that Sun came up with a new way to boost the revenue of Huobi by allowing Chinese investors to trade in cryptos using the citizenship credentials of Dominica.
“Huobi has signed a partnership with the Commonwealth of Dominica, a small island nation that is willing to grant so-called digital citizenship, even to those who have never set foot on its shores,” the WSJ wrote. “On Huobi’s app, new users who choose Chinese as their nationality while verifying their personal details are prompted to apply for Dominican digital citizenship.
“People familiar with the program said Chinese users will be able to trade on Huobi’s platform if they register for Dominican digital citizenship. Customers from other countries can also apply, but Huobi doesn’t automatically direct them to do so.”
Industry analysts said Chinese investors who verify their nationality as Dominican citizens are able to trade cryptocurrencies easily on TRON and Huobi, and also able to evade scrutiny by Chinese investigators. It will be noted that PM Skerrit signed an agreement with TRON to create the Dominica Coin (DMC), a blockchain-based fan token that Dominicans can use to trade in cryptocurrencies.
But Fontaine now disagrees with supposed agreement that Dominica has with Sun’s TRON.
This is the biggest crime, I think. You cannot engage in this and fool the Dominican public. We were not told that Justin Sun is authorized to sell Dominican citizenship at whatever price that he chooses. This has nothing to do with helping Dominica and we need to ask the prime minister of Dominica how much Dominica is making from the sale of those digital IDs, [and] how much is he charging for a passport…
Dr. Thomson Fontaine, Leader of the United Workers Party, Dominica
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