Former Baha Mar director Dionisio D'Aguilar said the government is being "bamboozled and misled" by China Construction America (CCA) and the Export-Import (CEXIM) Bank of China, whom he referred to as the government's "Chinese counterparts".
On June 29, 2015, Baha Mar developer Sarkis Izmirlian filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware following increasingly tense relations with the general contractor for the development, CCA, and the major financier, CEXIM Bank.
The government of The Bahamas subsequently moved to liquidate the project, and shortly after, CEXIM Bank put the project in receivership. Since then, negotiations have been quietly going on out of the spotlight for a potential buyer for the defunct resort, but D'Aguilar pointed out that there are some areas of concern.
"The problem that it presents to The Bahamas, is that there is no real rush to deal with it," D'Aguilar said. "I firmly believe that Sarkis Izmirlian would have been the best person to finnish this project, but circumstances lined up against him."
Nearly two weeks ago, Izmirlian's Granite Ventures Ltd. asked the Supreme Court to force an investigation of the status of the Baha Mar lawsuit against CCA's parent company, China State Construction Engineering Company (CSCEC).
On June 30, 2015, Baha Mar sued CSCEC in London for $192 million, and in a pair of affidavits supporting the request for direction, former Baha Mar executives Whitney Thier and Thomas Dunlap said not enough has been done to realize that claim.
In Dunlap's affidavit, he also raised the possibility that CCA was not focused on Baha Mar at a critical time. D'Aguilar supported that assertion.
"We had a very bad contractor, which evidence demonstrates misled that they could have opened up on March 27, 2015. It was not reported by CCA, that they could not meet that date, and they choose to hide that fact from the developer. They didn't want to bring it to light because they felt that there would be no real consequences. They just chose to say nothing. The developer would just tolerate and accept their deficiencies.
"The government can not do much because at the end of the day, the law dictates that once the property went into default, the largest creditor owed $2.5 billion, became the new owner which is the Export-Import Bank of China," said D'Aguilar.
D'Aguilar charged, "We need the project to move, the Chinese are in no way interested in making it move unless they get 100 cents on the dollar, and that is the dilemma for the Bahamian government. By the end of June, we need to have an auction. They are not even preparing the property for sale."
He added, "Unless the government forces an outcome, the property will be there for years."
D'Aguilar also contended that the defunct resort should be considered a "national security concern." D'Aguilar stressed that people are losing their jobs, vendors are not being paid, and it was going to be the engine of our growth.
"This project is so huge, it is having an enormous effect on a wide array of Bahamians," he said.
The well-known Superwash CEO and chairman of AML expressed his discontent that the government is not moving forward with the project.
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