Nevis

Nevis is the smaller of the two islands that form the federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Eastern Caribbean, with its capital at Charlestown. Under the 1983 constitution the island has its own Nevis Island Administration and Nevis Island Assembly, with control over many local affairs and a constitutional route to secession; a 1998 referendum on leaving the federation fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed.

The island runs its own company registry, separate from the federal one on Saint Kitts. Companies formed under the Nevis Business Corporation Ordinance can use nominee directors and file little public ownership information, which has made Nevis a recurring holding layer in sanctions-evasion structures. Investigators find such companies in the ownership chain rather than at its front end, above the tankers and traders that move the oil. OFAC's 19 May 2026 designations of ships and Shell companies moving Iranian oil included Nevis-registered companies alongside entities in Panama, Liberia, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Hong Kong and the UK. The same list spared mainland Chinese refineries for a fourth round running, so its weight fell on intermediary structures rather than on the buyers of the crude.

Nevis also shares in the federation's passport sales. Brussels gave the federation, and with it Nevis, until 1 June 2028 to shut its citizenship-by-investment programme, in a June 2026 letter also sent to four other Caribbean governments; talks in New York on 24 September 2026 ended without a deal.