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Monday, January 19, 2026
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FTX liquidators get $38m from selling Bahamas properties PICTURED from L to R: Juliana Braynen, deputy permanent secretary; Dr Lester Gittens, acting director of marine resources; Mike Cenci, senior law enforcement advisor/Wild Aid representative; Jomo Campbell, minister of agriculture and marine resources; Montez Williams, acting permanent secretary; RBDF commander, Bertram Bowleg; Marcia Musgrove, representative of The Nature Conservancy. Photo:Anthon Thompson/BIS
Illegal charters warned: ‘We’re coming for you’ BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net INVESTIGATORS are warning “hundreds” of suspected illegal foreign fishing charter operators that “we’re coming for you”, with Bahamian fishermen asserting: “We don’t want pirates and folks that don’t give a damn about our country.” Mike Cenci, who has spent three decades investigating prohibited fisheries practices, and was part of the operation behind last week’s apprehension of a vessel suspected of conducting illegal sports fishing charters in Bahamian waters, told Tribune
• Unlicensed commercial fisheries operators ‘out of control’ • And costing Bahamas ‘millions of dollars in fisheries value’ • Fishermen assert: ‘We don’t want pirates’ after third bust
Home tax concessions ‘not so earth-shattering’ BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net THE Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president says recently-unveiled first-time home buyer and real property tax concessions are “not as earth-shattering as they seem” and will likely represent “modest good news for a small number of people” in the middle class. Leonard Sands told Tribune Business that the incentives revealed by Prime Minister Philip Davis KC in his recent national address will have limited impact on both The
LEONARD SANDS Bahamas’ housing crisis, and shortage of available affordable homes for local buyers and renters, and
BUILD - See Page B7
GBPA chiefs avoid jail on water supply Order breach BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net A SUPREME Court judge has elected to impose a $6,000 fine, rather than send the directors of Freeport’s water supplier - including several Grand Bahama Port Authority (GBPA) principals - to jail after finding it breached an Order preventing it from disconnecting a condo complex’s services. Justice Loren Klein, in a January 15, 2026, verdict agreed it was possible to “feel a considerable degree
JUSTICE LOREN KLEIN of sympathy” for Grand Bahama Utility Company, which is 100 percent owned by the GBPA’s Port Group
DISPUTE - See Page B9
Business such activities are “out of control” and it will “take a while” for law enforcement and its partners “to turn this around”. Hailing The Bahamas for cracking down on such practices, with the latest apprehension marking the third such vessel seizure in just 13 months, he voiced optimism that as word of this latest arrest spreads among the Florida and US boating community - “the bad guys will realise the risk is not worth the reward and are hopefully deterred”. A senior law enforcement advisor for WildAid, one of the
CRACKDOWN - See Page B4
• Further $17m in sales ‘pending’ for Q1 ‘26 • 99% of 43,202 creditor claims adjudicated BY NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net FTX’s liquidators had raised $38.2m from selling-off eight of the collapsed crypto exchange’s Bahamian properties by early December 2025, it has been revealed, with “pending deals” and the appraised value of others set to generate a potential further $155.8m. Brian Simms KC, the Lennox Paton senior partner, and the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) accounting duo of Kevin Cambridge and Peter Greaves, in their latest report to the Supreme Court as liquidators for FTX Digital Markets, the exchange’s Bahamian subsidiary, revealed they are making headway in
BRIAN SIMMS KC disposing of the 37-strong Bahamian property empire acquired by its disgraced and jailed founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his associates. Apart from the deals that have closed, the FTX liquidator trio revealed that a further four sales worth a combined $17.2m are due
WIND-Up - See Page B6