Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has discovered the secret sale of diplomatic passports has helped keep some Caribbean politicians in power.” So went Al Jazeera’s tease to its near hour-long documentary that has sent shockwaves throughout Saint Lucia. Upon hearing it, the name Walid Juffali immediately came to mind. But when on Monday night the full documentary aired, it was clear that the main focus would be on Dominica’s diplomatic dalliances with shady foreign characters. Nevertheless, not to be missed was that at the heart of this diplomatic scandal was Saint Lucia’s diplomatic relationship with a Saudi multi-billionaire almost four years ago.
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Deborah Davies of Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, widely known for her exceptional work in the documentary: The Dark Side: Secrets of the Sports Dopers, left no stone unturned in this investigative report on Iranian national Alireza Monfared, how and why he was able to become Ambassador of Dominica to Malaysia.
It was clear from the onset of the documentary that Davies and her team had done their homework. Her interview with Geoffery Robertson was particularly ear-perking, with the legendary QC declaring: “Time and again we find that these small countries, often after bribes are paid, will qualify people with no connection, no experience, but who are international criminals, or who need, for some dubious reason, the protection, the shield of diplomatic immunity, and they buy it. It’s just a scandal, an international scandal.” The decision to interview Robertson was no accident. He just so happens to be a former UN judge, a human rights barrister and legal representative of Christina Estrada in her dirty divorce suit against Walid Juffali in 2016, before the British Courts.
In the documentary Robertson spoke about the origins of what is known here as the Juffali affair. “So, how do you get out of a law that everyone else has to obey?” asks the QC rhetorically. “Very simple, sail off to Saint Lucia. And lo and behold, in no time he [Juffali] was made the ambassador to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). And he never turned up. For two years he never turned up. And yet when his wife made an application for money he claimed immunity; diplomatic immunity as a shield. Now that was obviously outrageous.”
This 2016 report sheds light on what Robertson meant by “in no time”: “After separating from Ms Estrada in October 2013, Mr Juffali is alleged to have visited the Caribbean island [St Lucia] for the first time. Less than two months later, within 12 weeks, the IMO was notified of the Saint Lucian government’s request to appoint him to the [ambassadorial] role. On September 4, 2014 he was finally added to the London Diplomatic List. Just 13 days later, once immunity was secured, he divorced Ms Estrada in Saudi Arabia without her knowledge.”
How quickly our government can work when motivated. And for a foreigner at that! As for the 2016 report, it came courtesy of Mark Stephens, an ex-President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association. Stephens also appears in the Al Jazeera documentary, to state the obvious: “Being an ambassador is somebody who represents at the highest levels, and with the highest levels of probity and integrity their country and their country’s interests. Invariably that person is a citizen and a national, a domicile of the country who appoints them.”
That, for the most part, as Al Jazeera’s investigative team uncovered, has not been the case in the region—particularly not with Juffali’s appointment. Truth be told, there is little in the Al Jazeera report on the Juffali affair that would be altogether new to readers of this paper.
The January 30, 2016 edition of the STAR had reproduced a Daily Telegraph piece by Stephens that was particularly damning of the then Kenny Anthony administration: “As former President of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association,” wrote Stephens, “I’m struggling to think of any more cowardly abuse of the mighty institution that is diplomatic immunity. But beyond the specifics of the case, these proceedings should also be seen as a test for the British legal system. If Mr Juffali is successful in having his wife’s claim for financial relief struck out by the courts, and Kenny Anthony’s government in Saint Lucia is allowed to maintain its stance of simply sticking two fingers up at the Foreign Office, then I have no doubt it will set a precedent across the entire international community.”
By sticking two fingers up at the Foreign Office, Stephens was referring to the Kenny Anthony administration’s stubborn refusal even to suspend Juffali’s diplomatic immunity so he might appear before the British courts in the matter of his wife’s divorce settlement.
In the remembered Daily Telegraph article Stephens predicted: “Corrupt and morally-bankrupt regimes will become a magnet for wealthy people simply looking for protection from the law. Indeed, elite law firms are already rumoured to have been approached by super-rich individuals wanting to “do a Juffali” and obtain similar diplomatic privileges as a direct result of this case.”
Stephens went on: “It is scandalous that the Saint Lucia government is facilitating Mr Juffali’s attempts to avoid justice, and the very fact they have chosen not to waive his immunity makes a mockery of the Vienna Convention.”
If there is anything new about Al Jazeera’s reporting on Juffali specifically, it’s the scope of the impact it’s had in the years following. According to Stephens, not only did the Kenny Anthony administration set a horrible precedent for Saint Lucia, it’s a precedent that has had reverberations throughout the region and around the world. To quote Stephens again: “Indeed, elite law firms are already rumoured to have been approached by super-rich individuals wanting to “do a Juffali” and obtain similar diplomatic privileges as a direct result of this case.”
Now, almost four years after the Stephens article in the Daily Telegraph, we have an Al Jazeera report exposing how the sale of diplomatic passports for the sake of diplomatic immunity is a practice that has spread to other Eastern Caribbean states. Ironically, Kenny Anthony’s refusal to bend to the Foreign Office’s request for a suspension of Juffali’s diplomatic immunity status was because “to do so would give Saint Lucia a bad name”. As if already the Saudi’s divorce proceedings had not already seen to that, now comes the Al Jazeera documentary!
Doubtless the SLP’s new leader and his first deputy will, in the days ahead, offer their version of the Juffali affair—including why we made the Saudi our diplomatic representative at the IMO and why it was so important to him to be immunized against his ex-wife’s divorce settlement!
