The text below is just an opinion, my opinion… it could be false. Please, share your point of view. I’m French, my English is not good and I don’t mind. At the end of this message, I give you the phone of the local public authority who could give you some answers.
The bank St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank could have not respected many internationals rules regarding Anti-money laundering (the “know your customer” rules, eg. their name, address, their activity, the origin of the money, where it goes, why, is this card is a way to not pay income tax ? etc.) because of the Epassporte program, and furthermore, I think that this bank did not supervise Epassporte’s activity (via on-site inspections, etc.), as a conclusion, Epassporte’s program is not fully controlled, and that’s why Visa could have decided to stop Epassporte’s program.
Epassporte is just an AmEx like company. Visa is an association; Visa is not holding the money of the Epassporte Virtual Visa card account. The money is in the Bank St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank. Maybe on an Epassporte corporate account. If all card holders ask their money back at the same time, this small bank will go bankrupt in few days because of a liquidity problem. Moreover, this bank will give the money back only if they have enough information on the card holder. Visa will work with Epassporte again if they fully comply with the rule quoted above.
This issue is currently managed by Epassporte staff, but Epassporte could not be able to solve the problem till its end because they have no more income (visa killed their business).
The only organism who can help you is the Financial Services Department of the Ministry of Finance of St Kitts, it’s the local supervisor of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank. They will tell you what to do and to expect. It’s their job, like the FSA in the UK.
This Authority CAN protect your money.
You can contact them here:
Tel: 869-466-5048 (The international dialling code for St Kitts and Nevis is +1 869, I guess you can forget the ‘1’ if you are in the US)
E-mail:
[email protected]
www skbfinancialservices com (i am still not allowed to post url, but this post is important)
Source : www eccb-centralbank.org/Financial/fin_offshore.asp