He Hopes to Turn the Island of Nevis Into a Libertarian Paradise, With Crypto

Even money doesn’t seem to be convincing Nevisians. So many landowners have turned Destiny down that the development, originally intended to cover 2,400 acres, has had to scale back.

Mark Brantley did not respond to several emails and WhatsApp messages. Publicly, he has described the unusually high level of public engagement as “democracy at work” and has assured constituents that Destiny’s residents would not have the right to vote in St. Kitts and Nevis elections. Destiny, he has said, positions Nevis “as a destination for high-end investment.” All of this, he says, would be a net positive for the island.

Still, the commotion, not to mention a poll that found Nevisians were overwhelmingly against the law and Destiny, led Terrance Drew, the prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, to appoint a panel to review the law to ensure transparency and accountability.

Democracy at Work?

The loud democratic process might have come as a shock to Mr. Janssens, who had spent much of the last year courting the Nevisian authorities behind the scenes.

His team had lobbied hard for concessions, going as far as to ask for the right to prosecute crimes committed in the zone. In a recording of a meeting with the local hoteliers association in October, Mr. Brantley can be heard saying he had pushed back, proposing to let Destiny prosecute its own cases only if the local authorities retained the power to step in. “It’s a kind of halfway, one foot in and one foot out,” Mr. Brantley said.

Destiny spared no expense on its building plans: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the firm behind One World Trade Center, drew up the architectural plans. Its judicial adviser is Mark Beer, the legal mind behind the Dubai International Financial Center’s courts. Another known quantity, at least in libertarian circles, is Tom W. Bell, a law professor who advised Próspera, the semi-sovereign Honduran enclave, on its laws. Mr. Bell recently pitched legislation on “freedom cities” to the Trump administration. (SOM did not respond to requests to comment. Beer and Bell declined to comment on their work with Destiny.)