By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Louis Bacon yesterday branded the disclosure of private e-mails by a Cabinet Minister as an “own goal” that will undermine the Bahamian financial services industry and investor confidence in this nation.

The hedge fund billionaire, who together with the Save the Bays environmental group is embroiled in a bitter dispute with his Lyford Cay neighbour, Peter Nygard, said Jerome Fitzgerald’s disclosure of private information suggested to investors that their confidential data is not safe.

“What is perhaps most disappointing for the Bahamian image abroad, if not at home, is the recent unauthorised release by a senior cabinet minister of private e-mails of a charitable organisation, Save the Bays, and its bank records and foreign money transfers,” Mr Bacon said of Mr Fitzgerald’s actions.

“Never in a thousand years would I have thought it would be a sitting Member of Parliament of the Bahamas who would use unauthorised access to private financial and corporate information to try to destabilise me by putting this information in the public record, on television.

“Instead of feeling justified in my previous precaution as a fiduciary, I am actually stunned at the audacity of this lawlessness.”

There have been suggestions that placing the Save the Bays e-mails in the public domain could be a breach of the Data Protection Act, a claim that Mr Fitzgerald shrugged off yesterday.

But Mr Bacon, writing in an open letter, warned that their could be extremely negative consequences for the financial services industry and the Bahamas’ international investment reputation.

“If I am wrong that it is illegal, then I do not think international investors realise how tenuous the sanctity of their personal, business or banking information is in the Bahamas if they run afoul of certain politicians,” he said.

“Nassau has been a major offshore banking and funds management centre, and nothing strikes worry in financial fiduciaries more than the intrusion and publication by political powers of supposedly private banking records and private organisational correspondence.

“This ‘own goal’ by the Cabinet minister that introduced this sensitive private information will not go unnoticed by senior international banking and fund fiduciaries.”

Mr Bacon then recalled how his Moore Capital Management business pulled the administration of its hedge funds from the Bahamas, a move that cost more than 50 jobs at CITCO Fund Services (Bahamas).

Moore Capital Management had been the Bahamas-based fund administrator’s main client, and Mr Bacon said the decision to place his hedge fund business elsewhere had resulted in CITCO’s staff being reduced from 65 to just 12 today.

In his latest missive, Mr Bacon wrote: “As I have noted in a previous open letter, as a fiduciary I quietly pushed my funds management administrator to move any business having to do with my international investment funds away from the Bahamas (as I had previously urged for them to move to Nassau in the 1990s to be closer to my second home) after the rogue police raid on my home.

“Following the raid, which Nygard takes authorship for, I was concerned that his influence could gain him access to Moore Capital Management funds’ corporate records, correspondence, client rosters, bank transfers, etc.

“This withdrawal commenced under the FNM administration to their great dismay. It was not based on whichever reigning party was in power .It was also not done with any thought that whichever political party would try to embarrass or destabilise my business. I was worried about a private attack.”