Attorney General Steadroy “Cutie” Benjamin is supporting an online petition by St Kitts and Nevis Foreign Affairs Minister Mark Brantley, calling on US news network CBS to retract statements made during it’s 60 Minutes programme dubbed “Passports for Sale”.

Antigua & Barbuda was featured in the programme and Benjamin said it gave the wrong impression of this country’s CIP.

“We are supporting St Kitts in their move,” Benjamin told OBSERVER media.

He said the programme was biased and painted a bad picture of the CIP programmes in Antigua & Barbuda and also St Kitts and Nevis.

“Just like in St Kitts, we feel the programme was not properly conducted and they failed to properly interview the relevant parties,” he said.

According to Benjamin, the report could hinder the country’s ability to attract much- needed funding from its CIP.

“That reporter obviously has a bias and is trying to deter us from earning funds to get our economy going,” he said.

The AG said he also suspects that the island states are being placed under the microscope because of their small economies.

“The US has granted citizenship to persons who are known terrorists and nothing was said about that. But because we are a small island, they are taking advantage of trying to stop us from earning the much-needed funds,” Benjamin said.

Benjamin is suggesting that other countries take a similar stance on the matter.

“Most persons who are not properly informed think that this is a bad programme and may not wish to get involved. But we must take action to correct the wrong impression given by CBS,” he said.

The petition which has been signed by 110 persons to date, said CBS used old statistics from the year 2014 for the island of St Kitts & Nevis, looking at the past problems of the programme and not at the tremendous reforms made in the past two years.

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