St. Kitts brings in SVG's Saboto Caesar to build cannabis banking

As of 17 July 2026, St. Kitts and Nevis’ Medicinal Cannabis Authority has engaged Saboto Caesar, the former Minister of Agriculture in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to design a banking framework for the federation’s cannabis sector. Caesar arrives in Basseterre on 19 July for roughly five days of meetings with local financial institutions.

Nadiv Mills, CEO of the SKN Medicinal Cannabis Authority, announced the engagement on Wednesday, 15 July. “He was very instrumental in setting up the banking framework for St. Vincent’s Medicinal Cannabis Industry, so he will be helping us set up our framework and designing our solutions,” Mills said, per the release published by the SKN Consulate in Toronto. Caesar will meet financial institution representatives and share the policies that let SVG become the first OECS member to export medicinal cannabis, after receiving a German import licence.

The engagement lands against a difficult sector backdrop. Times Caribbean reports the SKN authority has cycled through three CEOs and a 15-member board across four years without issuing a single medicinal cannabis licence. Banking access has been the ceiling for regional operators throughout 2026: the Bahamas Clearing Banks Association warned in June that domestic banks cannot service cannabis firms under existing US correspondent-banking rules, and Caribbean regulators have been watching Schedule III for exactly this kind of relief.

Caesar’s brief also follows the June rollout of the authority’s public-education push, its Responsible Use Campaign. St. Kitts’s Freedom of Conscience (Cannabis) Act, 2023 put the legal scaffolding in place. The five-day visit is aimed at the plumbing that lets a licensed operator actually open an account.

What This Means

For travelers, this does not open the market. St. Kitts still has no herb houses, no dispensaries, and no walk-in tourist access. The federation’s framework remains built for registered Rastafari and personal permit holders, and cruise passengers docking at Basseterre should treat cannabis as prohibited outside those narrow permissions.

For the sector, this is the first concrete implementation deliverable in more than a year. If Caesar’s five days produce a working banking template, SKN can start converting applications into operating licensees. Whether the fall of 2026 produces the federation’s first medicinal cannabis licence after four dry years is the number to watch.