By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMIAN parents saving for their child’s college education supplied the original $20m financing for the Government’s flagship Carmichael Village affordable housing project being built by a contractor linked to an accused drug trafficker.

Corporate documents seen and obtained by Tribune Business reveal that the funding came from an investment fund called the Heritage International Scholarship Trust Plan, whose website describes it as a “cooperative education savings plan” that pools contributions from parents, grandparents, guardians and others towards covering the cost of a child’s university and college education.

Heritage’s role is disclosed in a so-called “promissory note”, filed and recorded with the Registrar General’s Department’s deeds and documents section on August 8, 2022. This guarantees the obligation of Carmichael Village Project Development Company, the Government special purpose vehicle (SPV) responsible for overseeing the affordable housing project, to repay the $20m advance.

Heritage International Scholarship Trust Plan, and the foundation of the same name, are clearly identified as the “lender” by the document. In it, Carmichael Village Project Development Company “unconditionally promises” to repay Heritage “the principal sum of $20m in immediately available funds” and interest on the dates set out by the schedule in an underlying credit agreement.

The latter document was not attached to the filings with the Registrar General’s Department. Payments from the affordable housing SPV were to be made to Heritage’s bank account at Royal Bank of Canada’s Bay Street branch, and the promissory note was signed by the late Antoinette Thompson, permanent secretary in the then-Ministry of Housing and Transport, who was named as Carmichael Village Project Development Company’s president and director.

The promissory note’s authenticity is confirmed by Heritage International Scholarship Trust Plan’s audited 2024 financial statements, produced by the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) accounting firm, which specifically note and break out the Renaissance at Carmichael Village advance among the fund’s Bahamian dollar investments.

The accounts for the year to end-December 2024 describe this as “a senior unsecured loan - Carmichael Village Development Project” with both its amortised cost and fair value stated to be $10m. This meant the affordable housing credit facility accounted for 29.5 percent, or close to one-third, of Heritage’s $33.939m Bahamian dollar-denominated investments at year-end 2024.

Heritage’s financial statements confirm that “investments denominated in Bahamian dollars relate to interests held in the plan by Bahamian subscribers” as their contributions are restricted to investments in this nation only under the exchange control regime and a February 5, 1992, agreement with the Central Bank of The Bahamas.

What all this means is that, in effect, funds invested by Bahamians seeking to save for and finance their child’s later-life tertiary education have been used to kick-start a project being constructed by a contractor owned by Top Notch Builders - a company linked to Jonathan ‘Eric’ Gardiner, also known as ‘Player’, who has been arrested and charged with drug smuggling by US authorities following his arrest in the aftermath of the May 12 general election plane crash. Mr Gardiner, in evidence and filings with the southern federal New York last week, confirmed Top Notch Builders is his “business” while revealing he has signatory authority over its bank accounts by producing a withdrawal slip purporting to show that $20,000 of the $30,000 found in his possession by US law enforcement came from its facility at Bank of The Bahamas’ JFK Drive branch.

And Tribune Business previously revealed that Complete Construction, the contractor constructing the Renaissance at Carmichael Village subdivision, is shown by corporate registry records as being almost 100 percent-owned by Top Notch Builders - meaning that, in effect, it is the latter’s alter ego, front and alias. The Carmichael Village promissory note was recorded on the same day Complete Construction was incorporated - August 8, 2022.

Michael Coleman, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent who swore the affidavit detailing the US government’s case against Mr Gardiner, alleged that the latter’s co-conspirators as recently as September 2024 said he “was currently building government buildings” and “reportedly trying to keep his involvement below the radar of law enforcement”.

“Based on my participation in this investigation, I understand that comment to be a reference to Gardiner’s company, which has bid on and secured Bahamian government-issued construction projects,” Mr Coleman claimed. “Gardiner owns a business that Gardiner uses to, among other things, bid on Bahamian government-issued construction contracts and launder his narcotics trafficking proceeds.”

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the Carmichael Village funding is consistent with Heritage’s investment strategy as set out in its 2024 audited financials. This states that investments by parents and other relatives are to be invested specifically in US and Canadian government debt securities; corporate debt instruments “with an approved credit rating”; and “guaranteed investment” certificates issued by US and Canadian financial services providers.

Affordable housing, and the promissory note, appear to fall outside this criteria. And the Carmichael Village Project Development Company loan also seems to have appeared in Heritage’s 2023 accounts - but at $20m, not 2024’s $10m, and in US dollars rather than the Bahamian equivalent.

Shortly thereafter, by March 2025, the affordable housing SPV suddenly appeared on the Government’s books showing a $10m debt owing to Bahamian taxpayers and the Public Treasury. This suggests that the Heritage loan may have been paid off yet six months later, by September 2025, Carmichael Village Project Development Company was shown as owing $20.2m to the Government.

Keith Bell, minister of housing and land reform, last year confirmed that at least a portion of the $20.2m related to loan repayments. “The loan became due. The Government paid $10m from the sales of the homes toward the loan, and the Government paid $10m out of the Public Treasury, and we have paid the loan back with interest and that’s it,” he said.

Confirmation of Heritage’s identity as Carmichael Village’s original financier also clears up some of the mystery surrounding the project’s funding source. This became controversial in 2022, shortly after the loan was signed with much fanfare, as Jobeth Coleby-Davis, then minister of housing and transport, said the Government had “entered into a funding agreement with a Bahamian wealth management fund” to supply the monies.

This “fund” has never been identified until now, but multiple media reports at the time said the facility had been arranged by Bahamian and Jamaican financial services providers - Simplified Lending and Proven Wealth, respectively. Heritage’s website names Proven Wealth as both its investment manager and administrator, while the promissory note describes both it and Simplified Lending as the Carmichael Village facility’s “arrangers”.

Johann Heaven, a director of both Heritage and Proven Management, was present at the loan signing ceremony. And Garfield ‘Gary’ Sinclair, one of Proven’s co-founders and a former Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) chief executive, is named as Heritage’s chairman and signed off on its 2024 audited financial statements.

Tribune Business sources yesterday questioned why the Carmichael Village project needed to source financing from Jamaican-controlled, as opposed to Bahamian, funding sources. And they also challenged whether Carmichael Village Project Development Company had the authority to bind the Government, and Bahamian taxpayers, to any obligation to repay this debt.

“Under the Public Finance Management Act, only the minister of finance can issue a debt on behalf of the Government,” one contact argued. “The SPV has no legal authority to take on $20m in debt. This is a brand new entity that nobody heard of. How can they commit to a $20m debt? What would enable this SPV to take on $20m?

“The Government is doing a lot of these financing things in the shadows. Where did the authority for this SPV to borrow come from? The question is: Who authorised this loan, and did the SPV have any authority in the law to take out such a loan? They would need authority [from Parliament] to borrow the money.”

Proven Wealth has strong political connections in Jamaica. One of its co-founders, Mark Golding, is leader of Jamaica’s principal opposition party, the People’s National Party (PNP), while another co-founder, Peter Bunting, served alongside him in the last of Portia Simpson-Miller’s Cabinets.

This newspaper saw photos of Philip Davis KC, the Prime Minister, meeting Mr Golding in Jamaica while attending the 2022 CARIFTA track and field championships just prior to the Carmichael Village loan signing. Mrs Coleby-Davis accompanied the Prime Minister on the trip, and visited Jamaican low-cost housing developments while there. It is likely that the financing arrangements were discussed at that time.

Simplified Lending was founded by Robert Pantry, a former RBC FINCO managing director, in partnership with ex-Central Bank governor, Julian Francis, and the company describes itself as the “largest mortgage and money broker” in The Bahamas. There is no suggestion that they or Proven Wealth have done anything wrong in relation to Carmichael Village.