THE Davis administration has sent a demand letter to the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA), giving it 30 days to pay more than $300m allegedly owed to government over the last five fiscal years. The Tribune understands the letter, which was sent last week, is in regard to clause 1(5)(c)of the Hawskbill Creek Agreement. #The letter represents an unprecedented escalation in the government’s pressure campaign against the GBPA, which Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis has accused of failing to follow its obligations under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement. #Representatives from the GBPA and the Office of the Prime Minister declined to comment when contacted by The Tribune yesterday. #Tension has been brewing publicly between the GBPA and the government since Mr Davis said last year that the authority is failing to maintain Freeport’s infrastructure and facilitate the growth of the city. #The government has previously demanded that the GBPA reimburse it for costs incurred in providing public services in Freeport over and above what it has earned in tax revenues from the city. #The latest letter says the GBPA must pay the government within 30 days. It follows presentation of an account of costs to the government, plus 25 percent of those costs. The total demand is $357m, and covers the years 2018-2022. #However, Freeport’s quasi-governmental authority last June hit back by arguing that the sums sought by the government are “contested” and “it is yet to be satisfied”. The claims are said to be supported by credible evidence. #GBPA’s president, Ian Rolle, said earlier this year that the two parties are engaged in dialogue regarding the island’s future. #“There’s no other island in The Bahamas who suffered like Grand Bahama was a result of these natural disasters, and so I think persons on the island have become frustrated and had communications with government, etc, and that caused the government, very passionate about every single island wanting development to happen, was very concerned,” he told reporters on the Bahamas Business Outlook’s sidelines. #“But we are pleased to actually say to everybody that we have well over $1.5 billion, almost $2 billion worth of projects now for Grand Bahama and I think the government has also said that recently, in fact, the PM said today, he reiterated what we’ve been saying for a while about the number of projects in the pipeline that will help transform the economy of Grand Bahama.” #Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said in November that the government informed the existing owners of Freeport’s quasi-governmental authority that it is prepared to acquire the GBPA and its affiliated assets if no suitable private investor or buyer emerges. #However, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell later said the government had withdrawn an offer to buy out the GBPA’s two shareholders, the Hayward and St George families, in favour of arbitration action.

THE Davis administration has sent a demand letter to the Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA), giving it 30 days to pay more than $300m allegedly owed to government over the last five fiscal years.
The Tribune understands the letter, which was sent last week, is in regard to clause 1(5)(c)of the Hawskbill Creek Agreement.

The letter represents an unprecedented escalation in the government’s pressure campaign against the GBPA, which Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis has accused of failing to follow its obligations under the Hawksbill Creek Agreement.

Representatives from the GBPA and the Office of the Prime Minister declined to comment when contacted by The Tribune yesterday.

Tension has been brewing publicly between the GBPA and the government since Mr Davis said last year that the authority is failing to maintain Freeport’s infrastructure and facilitate the growth of the city.

The government has previously demanded that the GBPA reimburse it for costs incurred in providing public services in Freeport over and above what it has earned in tax revenues from the city.

The latest letter says the GBPA must pay the government within 30 days. It follows presentation of an account of costs to the government, plus 25 percent of those costs. The total demand is $357m, and covers the years 2018-2022.

However, Freeport’s quasi-governmental authority last June hit back by arguing that the sums sought by the government are “contested” and “it is yet to be satisfied”. The claims are said to be supported by credible evidence.

GBPA’s president, Ian Rolle, said earlier this year that the two parties are engaged in dialogue regarding the island’s future.

“There’s no other island in The Bahamas who suffered like Grand Bahama was a result of these natural disasters, and so I think persons on the island have become frustrated and had communications with government, etc, and that caused the government, very passionate about every single island wanting development to happen, was very concerned,” he told reporters on the Bahamas Business Outlook’s sidelines.

“But we are pleased to actually say to everybody that we have well over $1.5 billion, almost $2 billion worth of projects now for Grand Bahama and I think the government has also said that recently, in fact, the PM said today, he reiterated what we’ve been saying for a while about the number of projects in the pipeline that will help transform the economy of Grand Bahama.”

Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis said in November that the government informed the existing owners of Freeport’s quasi-governmental authority that it is prepared to acquire the GBPA and its affiliated assets if no suitable private investor or buyer emerges.

However, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell later said the government had withdrawn an offer to buy out the GBPA’s two shareholders, the Hayward and St George families, in favour of arbitration action.

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Dressed in a canary blue suit on a warm December night, sweat dripping from his brow, Bishop Lawrence Rolle belts out the lyrics to his latest hit song for the hundreds of children and adults gathered to celebrate Christmas.

"FTX!," he sings, bent over and shaking his head for emphasis. "The money is gone!"

"FTX!," his backup singer and audience scream back. "The money have done gone!"

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Bahamian government's push to be the global destination for all things crypto, after years of having an economy overly reliant on tourism and banking. Instead, FTX is bankrupt and Bahamians are trying to figure out what's next for their country and whether their national crypto experiment has failed. Regulators are trying to locate FTX's customers' missing money.

Meanwhile, charities like Rolle's and dozens of contractors now out of work hope that another company will come along and bring new opportunities to the island nation, without the complications and embarrassment of an alleged billion-dollar fraud.

Rolle, a Pentecostal preacher known as the "singing bishop," is a prominent figure in the Bahamas. For decades, he's cooked and donated food to the poor and provided school lunches from his neighbourhood kitchen at International Deliverance Praying Ministry in Over-The-Hill, one of the most impoverished parts of the capital of Nassau. Rolle and his staff feed roughly 2,500 people a week.

Rolle had been invited by Kirby Samuel, the principal of Mt. Carmel Preparatory Academy, to sing as part of the school's Christmas celebration. His act consisted mostly of a half dozen Afro-Caribbean gospel songs, but one number stood out — his social media hit about the recent collapse of FTX.

Rolle's ministry received $50,000 from FTX in early 2022, one of several donations FTX made to the Bahamian people when it relocated to the Caribbean island nation in 2021. It was money, he said, that was used to restore a food storage trailer and make additional food donations. Rolle said it cost upward of $10,000 a week to run his food donation programme.

Asked about the failure of FTX, Rolle described it as a sad distraction from the many issues facing the country. Others are angry, particularly with Sam Bankman-Fried, the young founder of FTX. The Bahamas had a reputation, like some other Caribbean isles, as a destination for illicit and offshore finance. There was a belief that crypto would allow the island to diversify its economy, give Bahamians more financial opportunities and overall help provide the country a more prosperous future.

The country enacted the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act in 2020, making the Bahamas one of the first countries to put together a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The prime minister, Philip Davis, participated in the groundbreaking ceremony for FTX's new $60 million headquarters in Nassau in April, along with Bankman-Fried.

"Their arrival was sort of the culmination of the work the Bahamians did to move in this direction," said Stefen Deleveaux, president and CEO of the Caribbean Blockchain Association.

Several other crypto companies and startups are headquartered in the Bahamas, some of them at an incubator known as Crypto Isle, not far from downtown Nassau.

Deleveaux said he became interested in crypto as early as 2014, and mostly has been trying to focus his organizations' efforts on the non-trading parts of crypto, like blockchain technology, financial inclusion and technological uses. He remains sceptical about cryptocurrency trading.

"It's frustrating. Now when people think about crypto they are going to think of FTX," Deleveaux said. "That's going to make my own job much harder."

In some ways, FTX was both ubiquitous and removed from the local community, Bahamians said. Its ads were everywhere, most notably at the Nassau Airport in the hall for tourist arrivals. But at the same time, FTX ran most of its operations from the secure luxury compound known as Albany, where residents like Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake can be regularly spotted. Albany is located on the opposite side of New Providence, the most populated island in the Bahamas and the location of Nassau.

"You don't casually wander into Albany," Deleveaux said.

One bartender at the Margaritaville Resort, where FTX ran up an unpaid $55,000 tab, described a group of 10 to 15 mostly white FTX employees who would eat in the restaurant, faces buried in their laptops the entire time. While FTX did hire Bahamians or contracted with Bahamian businesses, it was almost entirely for logistics jobs like construction, janitor services or food catering.

Just as quickly as FTX became engrained in elite Bahamian circles did the whole thing unravel. FTX failed in spectacular fashion in early November, going from solvent to bankrupt in less than a week. One food catering servicer said he had to let go most of his workers after FTX, his biggest contract, went bankrupt.

Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested last month in the Bahamas, and extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges in what U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has called "one of the biggest frauds in American history." The floppy-haired crypto entrepreneur has been released on bail and is scheduled to go on trial in October.

Meanwhile, law enforcement and regulators in the U.S. and the Bahamas, as well as lawyers and FTX's new management, are trying to determine how much of investors' and customers' money "is gone," as Bishop Rolle repeats often in his song. Estimates of how much money was lost in the FTX collapse have varied significantly, since some assets are still being recovered, but one estimate puts the losses at around $8 billion to $10 billion.

"Like the rest of the world, I've been glued to my television set since (FTX's) collapse," said Mt. Carmel's principal Samuel, in an interview.

Other Bahamians, however, said the FTX collapse has diverted attention away from the ongoing issues facing the Caribbean country.

PRIME Minister Philip "Brave" Davis said despite the world suggesting that The Bahamas "should absorb all of those who leave Haiti", the government will not open the country's borders to irregular migration.

He said this is because we do not have the resources to do so.

Prime Minister Davis was asked about his government’s position on irregular migration and how they plan to tackle the issue after over a dozen Haitian migrants died after their boat capsized early Sunday.

Officials believe the group were en route to Florida from The Bahamas in a “suspected human smuggling operation.”

It is not clear how they arrived into the country or whether they were documented or not.

Yesterday, Mr Davis expressed confidence in the Royal Bahamas Police Force and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force’s efforts to protect the country’s borders and prevent human smuggling.

“The world is suggesting that we should absorb all of those who leave Haiti. That’s what they will say to me,” Mr Davis said during a press conference yesterday.

“When I was at the summit of Americas, they wanted me to sign onto an irregular migration declaration but we have our own peculiar circumstances which I keep reminding the world of. We’re unable to open our borders to irregular migration and our refugees either because of are own limited resources and because they ask us to do things, but at the end of the day, who foot’s the bill? You, the taxpayers so we have a delicate balance that we are going through so in so far as exiting, between the police force and the immigration department, they are collaborating to ensure that we assist in preventing the exiting of the irregular migrants here who loosely head to the north.”

Mr Davis also raised concern about the state of turmoil in Haiti and noted that regional leaders were looking at how best to resolve some of the issues in Haiti.

“CARICOM has appointed myself, as prime minister of The Bahamas, and the prime minister of Jamaica and I think the prime minister as the committee to look into how we could resolve the issues in Haiti,” he said.

“We just had a resolution – part of that resolution was finally passed about two weeks or about a week and a half ago so that we continue the presence of the UN peacekeepers on the ground. The question is whether there will be any intervention.”

Mr Davis continued: “You know our mission of CARICOM has always been that the solution has to be a Haitian solution rather than an imposed suit. That continues to be our position and we are to engage very soon in attempting to bring the factions together.”

“At the moment, it’s just the gang wars and it’s a failed state as we speak and efforts to bring the warring parties, and when I say the gang leaders together, are in train as I speak.”

“And so we’re just going to keep our fingers crossed. The situation in Haiti is really serious and we don’t know what the answer will be. There are talks about imposing the will of other countries onto the people, but again, as I said, we want it to be a Haitian solution, but where that is possible.”

FOLLOWING their 48-hour ultimatum last week, local activists of the Concerned Citizens Committee of The Bahamas (CCCB) have launched a three-phased campaign called, "Truth and Justice."

Last week CCCB urged the government to make a public statement about what allegedly took place between Transport and Housing Minister Jobeth Coleby-Davis and a police officer in May.

While the Elizabeth MP has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, CCCB said that so far it is dissatisfied with the results.

In a press release, the CCCB said: “Since the government has failed to communicate to the citizenry the status of such an investigation, we the CCCB have decided to begin a three-phase campaign called, ‘Truth & Justice' to ensure that there is fairness, and that justice is not only done, but that it is seen to be done.”

The first phase of the campaign will consist of statements and issuing press releases to the public. CCB also appealed to the Christian community and civil society to help them resolve the matter.

“We are sending letters to all church leaders to get them involved,” CCCB said. “We are asking them to call on the government to do the right and proper thing to allow the investigation to be free and fair and without prejudice.

“We are also calling on civil society to take a stand on this matter. We are asking all community leaders to please make your voices be heard. The law is for all, not just some. Today it is the matter involving this policeman. The powerful have taken a stand in support of the minister. We now call on civil society to stand on the side of justice. We are sending leaders to all our community leaders to lend their voices to this matter.”

CCCB is also urging the media to lend their journalistic powers to the cause of Justice.

“We are also asking the Fourth Estate, the media to demand more from the government on this matter. When we look at it, this matter happened in May. We are now in July and still no resolve with ministers making statements from the security of Parliament in support of the minister. We see this as wrong and one that prejudices the investigation. We appeal to the media to lend your journalistic power to the cause of Justice.”

The group said it is determined to have the government launch a full investigation as “this matter will not be swept under the rug”.