It never ceases to amaze real investors why respected organisations trot out the so-called "Doing Business" type reports, which contain soothing words of comfort that mask a nation's potential suitability for foreign direct investment.

The handling of the dispute between the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda and the United States of America by the World Trade Organisation has been well-documented elsewhere.

Antigua & Barbuda’s application for entry onto the UK’s extremely valuable White List was rejected in 2007.

The Government has never offered to purchase the property, the Half Moon Bay Resort, which includes a beach front hotel surrounded by 108 acres of amenities, golf course, estate and development lands. Between nature's gift and its owners' care, the property has been acknowledged by the Travel Channel in 1999 as being set on the best beach in the world.

Following the collapse of the Stanford Empire, a desperate plea for help to the IMF, and the more recent implosion of the Antigua Barbuda Investment Bank, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda has now had to return once again, cap in hand, to one of the most powerful and quietly influential nations on Earth.

After sixteen months of power, The Government of Antigua & Barbuda, led by the United Progressive Party under the stewardship of the Honourable Baldwin Spencer, has once again sent mixed signals on its adoption of international good practice with regard to foreign direct investment.

In 1999, the UK and US Government Treasuries both issued Advisories against the Nation of Antigua & Barbuda following weakening of its Money Laundering (Prevention) Act.

It has happened again. A Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda is once again proposing to balance the deficit of the nation’s economy by the sale of 110 acres of the Half Moon Bay Resort property.

For ten years the Government of Antigua & Barbuda has avoided the payment of compensation for its expropriation of the private property known as Half Moon Bay Resort.

"FORBES" enjoys an excellent reputation for investment reporting and forecasting that has earned it respect around the globe.

Quietly, ever so, quietly, yet another flag is carefully lowered forever in yet another far flung corner of Her Majesty's former Empire. This time, it is Antigua & Barbuda.

So, the Government of Antigua & Barbuda is sending a high level mission to the United States to plead, in the face of sanctions proposed by both the House and the Senate of the US Congress, that the expropriation of private property once belonging to R. Allen Stanford and to the long-time American owners of the Half Moon Bay Resort is "factually inaccurate".

It is extraordinary that, even in these times of international pretence and overlooking of deception in the interest of political correctness, the Government of the United States of America perseveres in ignoring the behaviour of one of its smallest and perhaps most determined enemies: the sovereign island nation of Antigua and Barbuda.

Fourteen years ago, Douglas W. Payne of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of "Storm Watch: Democracy in the Caribbean", publicly exposed the "Failings of Governance in Antigua & Barbuda".

In a recent address to the people who elected him to office approximately 100 days ago, the new Prime Minister of Antigua & Barbuda, the Honourable Gaston Browne, indicated that it is his intention of leading his country into becoming "an economic powerhouse" in the Caribbean.

Robert Coram wrote Caribbean Time Bomb: The United States’ Complicity in the Corruption of Antigua in 1993. His book, published by William Morrow & Co, part of Harper Collins, was immediately banned in Antigua.

Despite the protestations from Dr. Errol Cort, personal attorney for R. Allen Stanford on Antigua, former Attorney General and former Finance Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, former World Bank signatory, current unseated representative and present Minister of National Security, the latest Financial Regulator in Antigua has been summarily sacked.