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Dennis Minott | Billioneers of the Caribbean: From privateers to state capture
- aquest
- Feb 23
- 5 min read
Published: Sunday | February 23, 2025 | 12:10 AM
Jamaica and the wider Caribbean have long been fertile ground for fortune-seekers, from the notorious buccaneers of the 17th century to today’s billion-dollar oligarchs. The means may have changed — cutlasses replaced by contracts, cannon fire by campaign financing — but the underlying story remains the same: a region rich in resources and culture, repeatedly plundered by those who see it as a prize rather than a home.
The Caribbean’s past is a tale of conquest and commerce, where the line between enterprise and exploitation has always been blurred. Today, we witness a new chapter written by billioneers — modern-day profiteers who, like the privateers and buccaneers before them, manipulate the system to extract wealth while ensuring that power remains in the hands of a privileged few.
LICENSED PLUNDERERS AND FREE AGENTS OF CHAOS
In the 17th century, privateers roamed the Caribbean under royal commissions, plundering Spanish galleons and fuelling the rise of European empires. Their brutality was legitimised by crown-sanctioned “letters of marque,” turning them into state-sponsored pirates. Their spoils enriched England and France while leaving a legacy of lawlessness and instability in the islands they raided.
When peace treaties rendered privateers obsolete, many turned buccaneer — lawless opportunists who answered to no king. They built fortunes through smuggling, looting, and human trafficking, creating an economy of chaos that thrived in places like Port Royal, once dubbed “the wickedest city on Earth”. The earthquake of 1692 may have buried that stronghold, but it did not erase the blueprint for exploitation. Instead, new actors have emerged over the centuries, each finding fresh ways to extract Caribbean wealth for private gain.
RISE OF BILLIONEERS
While the buccaneers ruled with brutality, the plantation owners who followed were no less ruthless. Sugar barons amassed vast fortunes through slavery, and when abolition came, they ensured that economic power never truly changed hands. The Caribbean’s wealth has always been controlled by a few, and today’s billioneers continue that legacy — not through brute force, but through billioneering — the art of manipulating markets, governments, and public assets for personal enrichment.
Unlike the pirates of old, today’s economic overlords do not need swords or ships. Their weapons are monopolies, lobbying, offshore accounts, and sweetheart deals. They do not raid Spanish fleets, but they do corner essential industries, influence government policy, and shape economies to serve their interests while leaving the majority struggling.
ART OF BILLIONEERING
The billioneers of the Caribbean are more refined than their buccaneer ancestors, but their tactics are just as exploitative:
Privatisation and monopoly control: Essential services like electricity, water, and telecommunications are often handed over to private interests under the promise of efficiency. In reality, these industries become cash cows for a select few, with consumers paying exorbitant prices for basic needs while innovation and competition are stifled.
Political influence and state capture: By funding election campaigns and cultivating personal ties with politicians, billioneers ensure that laws and policies favour their business interests. They write the rules of the game while pretending to play fair. Those who challenge them find themselves outmanoeuvred, outspent, or outright silenced.
Offshore havens and tax evasion: The Caribbean is famous for being a tax haven, but while foreign billionaires stash their wealth here, Caribbean billioneers master the game from within — setting up offshore structures to hide profits, avoid taxes, and move money beyond the reach of local governments.
Tourism takeovers: The cruiselines, resorts, and mega-hotels that dominate the region do little for local economies. Instead, they extract wealth — paying low wages, dodging taxes, and ensuring that most profits flow back to foreign accounts. Locals are left with seasonal jobs while their nations’ natural beauty is commodified for private gain.
Land and resource grabs: From beaches to bauxite mines, natural resources are bartered away in secretive deals, often in the name of “foreign investment”. These agreements prioritise corporate profits over sustainable development, leaving environmental destruction and disenfranchisement in their wake.
Greenwashing of exploitation: Today’s billioneers have mastered the art of rebranding. Instead of openly looting the region, they now speak the language of “development” and “sustainability”, co-opting renewable energy projects, agricultural initiatives, and infrastructure deals in ways that ultimately benefit them more than the public. The same monopolists who resisted renewable energy for years now rush to redefine it and control it, ensuring that even the transition away from fossil fuels remains in their grasp.
JAMAICA AS A CASE STUDY
Nowhere is billioneering more evident than in Jamaica’s energy sector. Electricity remains a monopoly, controlled by interests that dictate prices while ensuring that cheaper, genuinely renewable alternatives remain locked behind bureaucratic barriers. The billioneers who own these utilities reap massive profits while everyday Jamaicans struggle under exorbitant rates.
Meanwhile, the push for sustainable energy is selectively managed — opportunities are given to those with the right connections, while independent innovators face endless hurdles. The result? A transition that moves at a pace convenient for the billioneers, maximising their gains while keeping the public dependent.
BREAKING THE STRONGHOLD
The billioneers of the Caribbean thrive on the myth that their presence is necessary for economic growth. But history shows otherwise: wherever wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, inequality deepens, and true development is stifled.
Just as the Caribbean once fought off colonial oppressors, it must now rise against economic overlords who disguise their self-interest as national progress. The fight is no longer on the high seas but in courts, parliaments, and civic movements. Transparency, accountability, and economic diversification must be the new weapons of resistance.
The Caribbean is not just a playground for the rich, nor a treasure chest for modern-day pirates strutting in Brioni suits, Ralph Lauren polos, and Ferragamo (or even greenish / pinkish Clarks ) footwear. It is home to millions who deserve better—who deserve a future where their nations are no longer plundered by a privileged few.
CALL TO ACTION
It is time to end billioneering and reclaim the wealth that rightfully belongs to the people of the Caribbean.
The battle is no longer fought with cannon fire or musket balls. It is waged in boardrooms, courtrooms, and parliaments. But just as the tides once turned against the privateers and buccaneers, so, too, must they turn against the billioneers who see the Caribbean not as home, but as prey.
We must reject the myth that we need them to prosper. We must hold accountable those who sell our futures for their fortunes. And most importantly, we must demand an economic model that serves us — not just the elite few who have inherited the spirit of piracy under a new name.
The Caribbean has been plundered too many times to count. The question now is: Will we continue to let new conquerors rewrite our fate? Or will we finally reclaim our nations for the people who truly belong to them?
Dennis Minott, PhD, is the CEO of A-QuEST-FAIR. He is a multilingual green resources specialist, a research physicist, and a modest mathematician who worked in the oil and energy sector. Send feedback to a_quest57@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.
by Dennis A. Minott, PhD.
February 16, 2025.
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