Monday, February 27, 2017
Emails that back propaganda claim
EMAIL correspondence seen by The Tribune appears to corroborate Earlin Williams’ claim that he and others were employed to produce propaganda material.
In an email dated August 25, 2015, entitled “Drop Obie”, Keod Smith asks for an update on the status of a graphic “showing Bacon with shadow of black wings like Satan embracing Obie and Sarkis Izmirlian”.
The purported email further outlines that Mr Williams will provide words for the project and itemises a 30-second advertisement, for Facebook and social media, to end with “renegotiate symbol”.
In the email, Mr Smith also makes the point that the “Westminster parliamentary democracy requires Cabinet Minister to resign when he is at odds with Cabinet”. It is likely that the email is referring to Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe and former Baha Mar owner Sarkis Izmirlian.
In August, 2015, during the government’s winding up petition against Baha Mar, Mr Wilchcombe called for the government to suspend its winding up petition and focus on its role as a mediator in the stalled negotiations. In an exclusive interview with The Tribune, Mr Wilchcombe said he felt that it was not too late to achieve a resolution that would avoid a protracted legal battle.
Those comments were characterised by some as a break from Cabinet protocol that undermined the government’s efforts.
In a Nassau Guardian National Review article on August 31, Managing Editor Candia Dames concluded that Mr Wilchcombe should tender his resignation as minister if he felt that the government’s action was not the best route, or be dismissed by Prime Minister Perry Christie.
According to a Nassau Guardian article on September 8, 2015, Mr Smith called for Mr Wilchcombe to resign for publicly opposing Cabinet’s decision on Baha Mar in a radio advertisement on behalf of “Renegotiate Bahamas”.
By AVA TURNQUEST
Tribune Chief Reporter
aturnquest@tribunemedia.net
A FORMER public relations agent for billionaire Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard has confirmed reports that the Lyford Cay resident and his attorney, former Mount Moriah MP Keod Smith, were involved in efforts to intimidate Supreme Court Justice Indra Charles and harass her son.
Earlin Williams, who spent seven years on the “Nygard/Keod Smith public relations machine”, endorsed reports that Mr Smith travelled to St Lucia to investigate Justice Charles, and further claimed that Mr Smith authorised the stalking of her son.
Mr Williams’ claims come amid speculation over whether Justice Charles has recused herself from the ‘murder for hire’ case filed against Mr Nygard and Mr Smith by several Save The Bays directors and independent plaintiff, Rev CB Moss.
“There’s some information I have and I think I need to keep,” Mr Williams told The Tribune. “There’s no need for me to reveal it. I think it’s already out there in the general public but I don’t want to be smeared with the brush that I was involved in anything untoward which seem to circle, cycle or circumference the child of Justice Charles.
“I would never be involved in something as nefarious as that,” he said. “I would never be involved in something that threatened children, where children who are innocent become cannon fodder for another machine. I thought that was going a little bit too far. That was beyond the pale and I couldn’t understand why Nygard and those had decided to take this tack.
“I didn’t pass an opinion on it because it wasn’t my business, but I don’t want to be associated with it because I have my own grandchildren and my own children and I wouldn’t want anybody to do it to them.”
Private information
The Tribune’s investigation concerning Justice Charles follows a 2016 report published in a St Lucia newspaper, that claimed a Bahamian lawyer, accompanied by a Bahamian police officer, were conducting investigations into the background of a Supreme Court judge. They were reported by St Lucia Today to have been observed conducting “a series of interviews and interrogations at government offices” and that St Lucia authorities had identified the two Bahamians who “paid various officials to supply them with information of a private nature on Mrs Charles”.
Justice Charles, a Guyanese national, spent 12 years in St Lucia as a magistrate and High Court registrar in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Since then, The Tribune has seen copies of St Lucia immigration entry documentation for Mr Smith on September 9, 2016, and Royal Bahamas Police Officer Camala McCoy, who entered the country a day earlier.
In October, Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade denied reports that a senior police officer had been sent to St Lucia to assist in the purported probe. He said he had ordered an investigation into the matter.
Emails seen by The Tribune purport to show correspondence between Mr Smith, Mr Williams and Tyrone Olander Jr, of A Culture Shock Media Group. The emails were not confirmed by Mr Williams.
According to its website, A Culture Shock is a Chicago-based marketing and promotion company with extensive experience in the Bahamian market. The company designs and produces the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture’s Bahamas Ambassador Magazine “BAAM”.
In BAAM issue 4, tabled in Parliament last week, Mr Williams is listed as BAAM’s editor, with Teejay Olander as creative director.
In an email dated October 10, 2016, Mr Smith requests for a pdf to be created of a Nassau Guardian article that covered Senator Allyson Maynard-Gibson’s commencement address at Lyford Cay International School in 2015.
Mrs Maynard-Gibson poses for a photo with the LCIS graduates which illustrates the article.
The request is also sent in a WhatsApp correspondence, also purported to be from Mr Smith, in which he asks the recipient to capture the photo accompanying the article and identifies Justice Charles’ son.
Sinister situation
Mr Williams confirmed to The Tribune that he also received the photo with certain instructions, but was adamant that he was not involved in any way.
“I understand that telephone calls were made to certain persons who were asked very close to the child, bam bam bam,” he said, “and I know there was an issue as to the Attorney General herself speaking at the commencement exercise at the Lyford Cay School where the child attended. I thought that was really a low, low, low blow and very unfortunate.
Referring to the photo, he said: “Yeah, that was being passed around. I saw that, that was passed around, this was an exercise that people on that Nygard side were promoting, and I think in today’s social media world where nothing is basically isolated once you begin to go on a trek that you’re following someone’s child.
“You’ve been down to St Lucia following the parent, now you’re in Nassau following the child, it does speak to a sinister macabre situation which doesn’t bode well for where we ought to be as a people.
Mr Williams continued: “To criticise the judge or to legally criticise a legal position is all well and fair, but when we start bothering with the wives and the children and the husbands of the judiciary then we get ourselves into a very, very, very shitty end of the stick and this is where it comes in as to how far is one allowed to go, and what’s the penance for going too far?
“That’s the question that has to be asked, but I don’t want to be in any way considered that I was involved in that felonious episode where Keod and those went to St Lucia and then they began this.”
Mr Williams’ exclusive account focuses on the alleged interference with Justice Charles that he claims took place after he severed ties with Mr Nygard and Mr Smith in November, 2015. He began working with Mr Nygard in 2009, but declined to answer questions about his role prior to their split.
“I probably think I was put out to pasture in the Nygard/Keod Smith public relations machine shortly after November of 2015 when I got the lawyer letter,” Mr Williams said.
“It was emailed to me from Mr Nygard’s attorney’s and also forwarded to me from Keod telling me that Mr Nygard was brokering a ... whatever it is ... a peace or settlement or withdrawal from his engagement and he wanted persons like myself who were involved in his part of the machine to deal with whatever we had coming at us and to, in other words, own up to what we were doing or what we had done.”
Mr Williams said he was also notified by Mr Smith that he would no longer be able to represent him in his libel case, in which he is being sued by Mr Nygard’s Lyford Cay billionaire neighbour Louis Bacon.
“What is happening here is that I’m being asked about my detail and my involvement in some things,” Mr Williams said, “which if I do not deny or clarify, makes it appear as if I was involved and I don’t need that. I don’t need no blight on my record. I run a very popular talk show, I try to keep my nose clean, I’m involved in any number of things.”
Mr Williams said: “I don’t want to be fingered as someone who goes on a campus to bother with somebody’s child. People’s kids and stuff ought not be cannon fodder in an exercise.”
Mr Williams was contacted as part of this newspaper’s investigation into requests for recusal of Supreme Court Justices Rhonda Bain and Indra Charles in matters relating to Mr Nygard, Mr Smith and Save the Bays - formerly the Coalition to Protect Clifton Bay.
Children’s safety
His claims come amid speculation over whether Justice Charles has recused herself from the ‘murder for hire’ case filed against Mr Nygard and Mr Smith by several Save the Bays directors and independent plaintiff, Rev CB Moss.
Justice Charles did not preside over the case on February 16, a date she set to hear motions for an injunction, a strike out action and the addition of an affidavit. Instead, Supreme Court Justice Donna Newton took her place and the matter was adjourned without an explanation.
The Tribune understands Justice Charles asked the Chief Justice to reassign the case.
“You can almost understand why, if it was me,” Mr Williams said, “and I was concerned about the safety of my children, and I saw that was happening. I would have to take another direction, I would have to get out of the way because I can’t expose my children to that.
He continued: “I’m not afraid. I mean I’ve had threats from that other side, real threats about what can happen to you if you do this and that but that is how it is, iron will cut iron, at the end of the day, Nygard has said officially, through his attorneys, admit to what you’re involved in come clean, that’s all I want.
“I received no instructions from him that changes that, and he can’t send me no new instructions, I don’t work for him any more.”
Mr Williams said: “And whatever I’ve done, I’ve done in the pale of the instructions he’s given me, and I felt as if I had a loyalty to him to do such.
“I now wait to go into court on my libel matter and to see how I’m able to defend myself and deal with that.”