Transcript
DAN MCGARRY - Bitcoin is an electronic technology that doesn't just relate only to online currency, but also has to do with anything that requires an auto trail, so you can do it for any number of different things, but the most common and the best known use of what's called blockchain technology is bitcoin. It's a virtual currency, which means that you can use it more or less as you would use money except that it only exists on your computer. In other words, you can't hold a bitcoin in your hand. The news that came out recently, which has since been rebutted in a number of different important ways is that one agent who is selling Vanuatu passports was announced that they would be accepting payment in bitcoin and that became the story as it was first told. It became one where people were being told that you could buy your Vanuatu citizenship in bitcoin. The important part of that story turned out to be false however.
SJH - Do you know why Vanuatu was a target for this scheme?
DM - Well this is something that we're still looking into actually. I've been discussing with other more reputable members of the, what's called the Wealth Mobility Aspect of things. Wealth Mobility basically when people want to move their wealth out of the country that they are living in currently. Sometimes involves buying passports, obtaining citizenship by legitimate means I have to say. This happens most often because people are a little uncertain about their future. The bottom line is that Vanuatu does not have a good reputation worldwide. They are not considered to be properly run, to be well administered and there are a number of aspects to the programmes that we have in place that are not shared by other well established passport sale offering and therefore that puts our reputability into question and it makes some of the more credible and the more reputable agents shy away from us and I've been speaking with a few who have told me in as many words that the way things are set up in Vanuatu right now, we just don't want to touch it and that's quite worrying because it means that the people who do come to us are perhaps not quite the kind of people that we would want.
SJH - So the systems in place in Vanuatu are being taken advantage of...
DM - There are some concern that we might have people playing fast and loose with it, trying to sell passports to people who really don't deserve them. Not necessarily doing due diligence that should be done. These are all matters of extreme concern because the last thing that anybody wants is for Vanuatu to have a reputation as a place where the dodgy people go.
SJH - Why does the government reportedly want to distance themselves from this scheme?
DM - Well the government has actually driven a great deal of this and the problem is it hasn't shown a great deal of consistency over the years. We've got four separate programmes that have been set up, each one after the other as people get new ideas about how to tap into this money and I have to say the money is quite significant. It's a couple percent at least of our annual GDP, I mean it's quite a large amount of money in excess of, we're seeing projections for 2018 in excess of $40 million US dollars. That's a significant part of our annual revenue. In fact it's the single largest source of revenue aside from the VAT.
