The passport king who markets citizenship for cash
It was supposed to be a lunch, but the Swiss businessman was not eating. As his companions tucked into their pasta, Christian Kälin sipped mineral water.
The party had gathered at a restaurant overlooking the golf course in Frigate Bay, on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Kälin, wiry and softly spoken, was in town to keep an eye on the general election in the former British colony.
The date had been set for 25 January 2010.
With him was Alexander Nix, the now-notorious founder of Cambridge Analytica. Back then, the bespectacled old Etonian was running the elections division of Strategic Communications Laboratories, known as SCL.
Nix was being paid to help secure a fourth term for the country’s Labour prime minister, Denzil Douglas. Kälin wanted to know if Douglas was going to win. He had been offering advice to SCL and its candidate.
In the Caribbean, they call Kälin, 46, the passport king – he has transformed a small firm of wealth advisers into the leading player in a $3bn (£2.3bn) global industry. His company, Henley & Partners, tells small countries how to transform passports into cash – a legitimate and legal business.
In exchange for donations to a national trust fund, or investments in property or government bonds, foreign nationals can become citizens of a country in which they have never lived.
Henley has made tens of millions of dollars from this trade, and its first
