By Rod SweetIt was the biggest project in the Bahamas and was meant to secure the reputation of a Chinese contractor hoping to expand in the U.S, but this week the $3.5bn Baha Mar casino and resort scheme was hit by bankruptcy and a claim in a London court. The company is building a huge $3.5 billion, 1,000-acre resort in Nassau that originally was supposed to open previous year.
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The Government remains committed to being open and transparent with the Bahamian people, as it has since the beginning of this project.
For China, which backed the project with a $2.45 billion concessionary loan and supplied a government-owned construction firm to build the resort, the fiasco represents a formidable hurdle to the country’s billion-dollar aspirations to deepen ties to Latin America.
Kekst president and CEO Jeremy Fielding leads the Baha Mar PR work. CCA was picked as the main contractor and construction began in February 2011.
The Baha Mar project will include the SLS hotel brand.
On-site inspectors, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, said China Construction, after falling behind, rushed to schedule inspections as they completed various phases of the project.
The turmoil and internal squabbles over Baha Mar have roiled the Caribbean nation’s fragile economy, while aggravating would-be tourists and idling thousands of workers amid sky-high Bahamian unemployment and slack revenue growth.
Baha Mar said, “This adjournment unfortunately makes it impossible at this time to act on the USA Court approvals we received yesterday which would allow us, among other things, to pay salaries and benefits for Baha Mar Citizens as well as pay ordinary course suppliers and vendors for goods and services post the commencement of the Chapter 11 process”.
Izmirlian blamed CCA for the company’s troubles, stating that Baha Mar had hired and trained 2,000 staff on the promise of a March 2015 opening.
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Subsequent to the bankruptcy filing, Baha Mar Ltd. said it sued China State Construction Engineering Corp., the resort’s general contractor, for what Baha Mar Ltd. said were multiple delays that caused the resort to repeatedly miss opening deadlines. “All of this now stops with and can be remedied through the Chapter 11 process”.
