Dear Prime Minister,

Thank you for naming me and for the more measured tone of your press conference. I wish to deal with several misleading and untrue statements.

Replies and action

At your September 9 press conference, you said I claimed that you had not responded to my correspondence. That is incorrect. I acknowledged your replies. The issue is that the central questions remain unanswered, and the evidence has not been acted on.

For clarity, my fourteen CBI letters were private correspondence to you and specified recipients. They are distinct from my open letters on electoral reform and my correspondence on the minimum wage.

Here is the record on the matters you raised.

CBI

Since October 2019, I have repeatedly submitted evidence that citizenship was being offered below the regulated price. On May 17, 2021, you replied that Government was aware of non-compliance and was exploring ways to address it. On March 16, 2023, you told me that Government would deal with discounting “with full force.” And on November 1, 2023, given the recent revocation of Dominica’s UK visa-free access, a meeting of all CBI real estate developers was convened by Ambassador Nanthan to tackle the issue of discounting. Everyone present knew the extent and destructive nature of discounting and the entire meeting came to one simple conclusion: it has to stop immediately, and stopping it simply requires the CBI Unit to enforce the regulations. Yet nothing changed and my later October 2024 and June 2026 letters to you revealed illegal discounting in approximately 80% and 100% respectively of the transactions surveyed with discounts averaging over 50%.

For your information, due to your inaction on this matter for 5 years despite clear evidence, I contacted Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) Director McKelson Ferrol on my own initiative on October 17, 2024, copied him on my evidence of October 21, 2024 and met with him on December 11, 2024. Your January 6, 2025 letter then stated that “any inappropriate activities shall be reported to the FIU for investigation.” Almost two years later, what is the result of the FIU investigation?

An investigation is not needed to enforce the regulated price. For seven years, you and the entire industry have been aware of this and we all know you could stop it within 48 hours if you wanted to. Your own CBI Unit estimates that currently about 95% of all CBI transactions are illegal. So the question that you refuse to answer and that I keep asking is: Why, then, knowing the consequences to our treasury, have you allowed the discounting to continue after seven years of evidence, acknowledgements and promises? 

And for anyone still unclear about what discounting costs our Treasury, I offer a simple analogy at the end.

Electoral reform

Your claim that I discouraged people from confirming or voting is false. My first electoral letter followed my attempt to register on January 12, 2026, when I was turned away because the system was not ready. My letters repeatedly called for participation. 

Prime Minister, if the pitch is not ready or level and the referee is not trusted, saying so is not telling players to abandon the match. It is asking for a fair match.

You said it is false that Parliament passed the electoral laws knowing the Commission was not ready. But did your Government give the Commission the final bills in time to review them, and did the Commission confirm that it was ready to implement them, including continuous registration and voter ID cards, before Parliament passed the bills?

You said that the Roseau North by-election could have been held without the last-minute legislative amendments.  Really?  These amendments dealt with risks that registered voters might be missing from the published lists, or turned away because their voter ID cards had not been issued. Are you really saying to the Dominican public that elections could have gone on with a risk of eligible voters being unable to vote?

Prime Minister, be honest with the people of Dominica: this reform process has not gone well and has not yet delivered on what Duncan Stowe called on October 7, 2025, “a renewal of trust between the people and the institutions that safeguard their voice.” Will you therefore allow a meaningful period after confirmation ends for citizens to register, applications to be processed, voter ID cards to be issued, accurate lists to be published and further legislative amendments made where necessary before an election writ freezes the register?  

Policy and personal interest

The following corrects the record on the matters related to the Minimum Wage, the Alien Landholding Tax and the AID Bank loan. In each of these instances, you have tried to portray me as motivated by personal interest alone. I will let the record speak for itself.  

You gave the impression that I was opposed to the 2025 minimum wage increase despite my letters stating that “we fully support an increase to the minimum wage….” The primary issue as you well know was the three days’ notice to the private sector of the new rate vs. the more than six months’ notice proposed by your own appointed Minimum Wage Advisory Board.  It was honestly shocking to me that you showed so little understanding or consideration of how the private sector operates and for its basic need to plan.  We also explained the unique compensation structure of the hospitality sector, where for example the lowest paid employee in our case was earning 50% over the minimum wage, and yet the increase to the minimum wage had a huge impact on our wage bill.  The transitional support requested to buffer the impact – which was never granted despite promises – was on behalf of the hospitality sector, not for our businesses alone.

Regarding the 2021 increase, my letter also stated that “we support the increase in general.” My concern again was the timing, but this time related to COVID. I said, “It is honestly inconceivable to us that in the midst of a pandemic with mounting losses and zero cash reserves, the Government would not seek to consult the sector on the timing of the implementation of what is clearly a significant and unplanned increase to our operating costs.”

For context, while employers were struggling to keep their businesses open and to keep their employees on payroll, particularly in the hospitality sector, in the middle of COVID, you moved into a residence costing the taxpayers and the treasury in excess of EC$600,000 a year in rent and other residence-related costs.

Regarding the Alien Landholding Tax, the relief I proposed was for investors in all Government-approved developments, not Secret Bay alone. As I wrote, “all current and future approved development projects would greatly benefit,” and the vacation-home market “may well be” our best hedge against a vulnerable CBI market. You denied the proposal, but I continued to advocate for it. Dominica’s non-CBI villa and residence market is the weakest in the region and will remain so unless this barrier is addressed. It makes a non-established destination even more uncompetitive.

Regarding the AID Bank, you disclosed confidential banking details and suggested Secret Bay took 50% of the facility for tourism businesses. My records show that the facility was EC$15 million and we first borrowed approximately EC$2 million (or 13% of the facility), repaid it in full after Hurricane Maria, then borrowed EC$2.5 million (or 17% of the facility) in 2018. The loan balance as at August 2026 was EC$1.5 million. But having disclosed our banking arrangements, will you identify the facility’s other borrowers and state what each borrowed and still owes?

And for completeness, I am 59 years old, not 60, and Secret Bay has 27 villas, not 46. For someone who claims to know the details of my banking arrangements and monitors my private meetings, you should know these things.

The private meeting

Your explanation of the security officers at Fort Young as “normal” is quite incredible.  The August 26 event was private, invitation-only and closed to the media. Fort Young is privately owned. The hotel’s public accessibility gives no one the right to monitor or intimidate those attending a lawful private meeting, or to infringe their constitutional freedoms of assembly and expression. What national security concern justified monitoring those attending a private civic discussion? Who authorised it, and under what policy or law?

You said that criticism being voiced freely and without hindrance proves the health of our democracy. I do not know which Dominica you are living in, Prime Minister. Dominicans whose jobs, contracts, housing, businesses, children’s education, healthcare or livelihoods depend in any way on Government bite their tongues for fear of victimisation. Everyone knows this.

Government contracting without full disclosure

You said the US$75 million cruise-port agreement could be concluded within weeks. Will there be no public disclosure of such a major agreement before it binds the country? Was there a public tender process? Were tourism stakeholders consulted? What is the concession term? Will an environmental and social impact assessment and an independent value-for-money assessment be completed? Who are the beneficial owners of the company being granted the contract?

Gratitude and accountability

You asked what changed after recounting your support for Secret Bay and quoting my 2019 defence of CBI. Nothing changed in my ability to be grateful and honest at the same time. I publicly thanked you in 2021 as an important believer in Secret Bay. I can appreciate your support and still challenge Government policy. I can support CBI and oppose its mismanagement, support higher wages and challenge their manner of implementation, and support voter participation while demanding a fair process. None of that is a contradiction, and none of that makes me your enemy.

What I am asking

Stop discounting immediately. Support an independent commission of inquiry and an external forensic financial audit of the CBI programme over the past ten years. Ensure that the remaining electoral defects are corrected before a general election. Explain the reason for the deployment of the security services to the private-sector meeting. Publish the proposed cruise-port terms before signature.

You have framed my concerns as selfish or political. Seven years of evidence without effective CBI enforcement, a muddled electoral reform process, agreements advancing without sufficient disclosure, and citizens’ fear of speaking openly have convinced me that silence is no longer responsible.

I would prefer to focus on investing, building businesses and creating employment. But the success of any business depends on the quality of the country in which we work and live. Fair elections, independent institutions, transparent public finance and equal application of the law are not and never should be political luxuries. They are the foundation of confidence in our country.

We need people in Cabinet and Parliament willing to question their own leaders, and citizens free to question all of us. Loyalty to a person or party must never come before loyalty to Dominica. The presence of security officers to monitor those attending a private civic discussion, and your defence of it, show why we must break the cycle of intimidation and fear. Disagreement should never make a Dominican afraid to enter a room or speak their mind.

And yes, I have engaged with independent candidates and several political parties, sharing my concerns about the dire state of our democracy and economy, together with proposals for a better way forward. Your failure to heed seven years of warnings, advice and constructive criticism does not prevent others from recognising that our current direction puts Dominica’s future at serious risk.

I will continue to speak and act in whatever lawful civic capacity proves necessary. I remain ready to answer any question you put to me. I ask you, once again, to answer mine. 

I also invite you to sit down with me before the media to discuss these and other national issues, with a moderator of your choosing.  I await your answer.

Let us put Dominica first. Our people deserve more, and together we can build a better future.

Yours sincerely,

Gregor Nassief

Note #1: I placed some questions in bold and italics with the expectation that once again they will not be answered but in the hope that the press will ask these questions at the next press conference.

Note #2: Here is the simple analogy illustrating what discounting costs our Treasury.

Imagine geothermal exports to Martinique generated half of Dominica’s national revenue. To increase exports, Government authorises foreign companies to extract and sell the energy, provided they charge the legal price and pay a share of their revenue to the Treasury. Instead, they illegally sell at half-price. Martinique stops buying from Government and buys from them. The Treasury loses the full export earnings and receives only the smaller revenue share. That, in simple terms, is what CBI discounting does.  Over seven years, it could amount to billions of dollars that should have flowed through lawful channels, not money that went missing or was stolen, but revenue redirected away from the Treasury to third-party entities through illegal discounting schemes.