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* DPM says he took Oceania Heights dispute to ‘point of being resolved’

File Pic of DPM

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Deputy Prime Minister yesterday said he felt he had taken the Oceania Heights dispute to a point where it could be resolved, amid fears that the controversy has cost Exuma “a generation of investors”.

Philip Davis, who took up the role of mediator in the long-running dispute between Oceania Heights’ residents and the developers, said that title documents and conveyances would be returned to the property owners, with unsold lots to be liquidated and the proceeds used to compensate those owed money.

Mr Davis, who was the keynote speaker at a small business summit hosted by the Exuma Chamber of Commerce at the Sandals Emerald Bay Resort, told Tribune Business: “As far as I am aware I mediated to the point where I thought the matter ought to have been resolved by now; it’s just a matter of executing all the conditions under which we were settling the matters.

“All of the purchasers of lots who would not have gotten their deeds as yet, their deeds were sent from the lawyers to either their lawyer and/or to the president of the Chamber of Commerce.

“Their conveyances would be with either their lawyers and/or the president of the Chamber of Commerce. On the issue of Stamp Duties that may have been advanced and not paid, the lawyers have agreed to reimburse the persons, and the unpurchased land in the subdivision is to be conveyed to an entity, a Property Owners Association, that will hold those lots and liquidate them so that other persons who are owed monies could then be compensated from that fund.”

Meanwhile, Pedro Rolle, president of the Exuma Chamber of Commerce, which also stepped in to mediate in the protracted dispute earlier this year, told Tribune Business that the affair had cost the island of Exuma “a generation of investors”.

“I think we have lost a generation of investors,” he said.

“We have lost a segment of investors because of this and we will never get them back, even when we have solved this problem.

“Those people who have suffered will never come back. The money that they intended to invest, the homes they would have built, the spin-off that we would have gotten from them vacationing here, we have lost that forever,.

“I don’t care how this turns out. We just have to hope we can solve this and engender confidence to new people who may want to invest in Exuma or the Bahamas.”

The main complaints of Oceania Heights homeowners are that they have been unable to obtain title/conveyancing documents to the properties they have bought; there are questions whether more than $880,000 in Stamp Tax they paid has been passed on to the Treasury; attorney Anthony Thompson failed to disclose he was also a beneficial owner of Oceania Heights when acting for the buyers in their purchases; the same lots have been sold to different buyers; and the hotel and other promised amenities have not been constructed.