The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Hannes Babak has slammed as “nonsense” documents purporting to show he, and others, would have received ownership stakes in key Freeport utilities as ‘Finder’s Fee’ compensation over the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s (GBPA) sale.

Tribune Business has obtained documents showing that a company, called Bahamas Overseas Holdings, would have been handed Port Group Ltd’s equity stakes in the likes of Sanitation Services and Grand Bahama Utility Company if the Kell Ryan/Highgrove Securities bid to acquire the GBPA had succeeded.

However, Mr Babak ridiculed these documents when contacted by Tribune Business, branding them as “nonsense”.

He also denied that there had been any Russian investor interest in Bahamas Overseas Holdings, as suggested by associated e-mails seen by this newspaper, and refuted the notion that he - and this company - would have been granted ownership interests in key Freeport assets in return for brokering the GBPA’s sale.

“There was never a contract signed between the Ryans and myself, or a company owned by the Ryans,” Mr Babak told Tribune Business.

“There were a lot of things discussed but never a deal. There was never anything signed.”

Tribune Business, though, possesses what appears to be a draft ‘Finder’s Fee’ agreement between Bahamas Overseas Holdings and the Ryan/Highgrove Securities bid vehicle, Hawksbill Property Holdings.

The document, labelled a ‘Finder’s Commission Agreement’, and dated September 24, 2014, refers to ‘Project Grand Bahama Sunrise’ - the same name used by Highgrove Securities, a UK-based boutique investment house, and Mr Ryan, a member of the family that founded the world-famous Ryanair airline.

Bahamas Overseas Holdings, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, is described in the unsigned agreement as ‘The Finder’ that has “introduced Hawksbill to the project on Grand Bahama” - the acquisition of the Hayward and St George family equity interests in the GBPA and Port Group Ltd.

“Hawksbill acknowledges that it has received this introduction from The Finder and, in return for this introduction by The Finder, has agreed to pay a finder’s commission to The Finder upon or concurrently with the successful completion of the transaction,” the draft agreement states.

“Hawksbill and The Finder have agreed that such finder’s commission shall be the transfer to The Finder of 100 per cent of the legal and beneficial ownership of the assets and businesses listed herein under Schedule Two of this agreement, and to be done as soon as Hawksbill has acquired them by way of a sale to Hawksbill from their owner or owners.”

The so-called ‘schedule two’ assets that formed the ‘finder’s fee’, and would have been transferred to Bahamas Overseas Holdings, are the 100 per cent equity stakes held by Port Group Ltd in Grand Bahama Utility Company (the water supplier) and Freeport Commercial & Industrial.

And the 50 per cent equity stake in Sanitation Services, and 20 per cent holding in the Grand Bahama Shipyard, would also have been heading Bahamas Overseas Holdings’ way had the Ryan/Highgrove Securities offer succeeded and the ‘finder’s fee’ been agreed.

Tribune Business had previously been informed by well-placed Freeport contacts about the potential ‘Finder’s fee’ agreement, but has been unable to obtain documentary evidence until now.

Had it gone through, it would have both broken up the existing Port Group of Companies and stripped it of some of its most profitable assets - Grand Bahama Utility Company and Sanitation Services.

However, Tribune Business has seen an e-mail chain which suggests that within two to three months of the ‘Finder’s Commission Agreement’ being drawn up, Highgrove and its ‘point person’, Simon Whittley, were already having second thoughts as to the deal’s structure.

And an e-mail, sent to the late Sir Jack Hayward and his companion, Patty Bloom, on December 15, 2014, suggests that Mr Babak has a 33 per cent equity interest in Bahamas Overseas Holdings, with the remainder split between another Austrian and a Russian investor.

The e-mail, which takes the tone of a warning to Sir Jack, says that Bahamas Overseas Holdings is insisting that the Port Group’s “income producing properties be gifted” to it as a finder’s fee, which is valued at $50-$85 million.

“My contacts feel there is a deal to be made here, but this company is not desperate enough to give up asset producing income then have to invest over $400 million, and with no income producing assets,” the e-mail tells Sir Jack of the Ryan/Highgrove offer.

Tribune Business previously revealed how Sir Jack’s children and grandchildren successfully removed the last remaining trustee for the Sir Jack Hayward Discretionary Settlement 1993, the family’s parent trust, via a Supreme Court hearing before Justice Indra Charles where only their attorneys were present.

Ex-financial services minister, Ryan Pinder, and Paul Winder, both Deltec Bank & Trust executives, have been appointed as Judicial Trustees, working under Supreme Court supervision, in place of Prometheus Services Ltd.

Tribune Business understands that Prometheus has been given until November 5 (this Thursday) to respond to a series of questions set out in the October 5 Supreme Court Order.

And the former corporate trustee for the Sir Jack Hayward Discretionary Settlement 1993 is understood to be preparing for a two-day Supreme Court hearing on November 19-20, when it will attempt to argue that the October 5 Order appointing the Judicial Trustees be set aside on legal technicalities.