Antigua’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne has hit back at US claims that he believes “unfairly and unjustly” harm his nation’s reputation.

On Tuesday, Browne made a statement to the Antiguan House of Representatives regarding the US State Department’s 2015 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), which labeled Antigua and six other Caribbean countries “jurisdictions of primary concern for money laundering.”

Browne said a diplomatic note had been transmitted to the US government stating that “the comments and assertions on Antigua and Barbuda in the INCSR 2015 lack any basis in fact and are not based on objective criteria.”

Browne said he was “especially amazed” by the report’s characterization of Antigua’s online gambling industry as “growing.” Browne said it was hardly a secret that Antigua’s online gambling industry “has been in decline directly as a result of the action by the United States government which has been found by the World Trade Organization to have damaged” Antigua’s economy.