The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A former Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) general manager believes he was appointed “without my knowledge” to the same company Board on which the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme’s architects also sat as directors.

Bradley Roberts told Tribune Business that he “never agreed or even offered” to serve as a director of the Prospero Group, the controversial company headed by the late Bahamian businessman, Hubert Pinder.

Mr Roberts said he only ever met Mr Pinder once when invited to a dinner with Prospero’s majority shareholder, and he quickly realised the latter was “a talker” with plans that seemed very “far fetched”.

Tribune Business revealed yesterday how the NHI scheme’s architects, Etoile Pinder, the daughter of Mr Pinder, and her husband, Sanigest Internacional president, James Cercone, also served as directors on Prospero’s Board.

This has resulted in them being hit with an inventor’s demand that they pay a $5.154 million judgment he is seeking to enforce against them - an action Mr Cercone has slammed as “inappropriate”, because it is unenforceable against them.

Prospero’s filings with the US capital markets regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), also reveal that Mr Roberts, who served as BEC’s top management executive from 1998 to 2003, was seemingly appointed to the Prospero Board.

His appointment was announced on December 12, 2007, and Mr Roberts was given a biography that described him as having “more than 40 years’ experience with the Bahamas Electricity Corporation.

“Most recently, Mr Roberts is a member of the Board of Bahamas Development Company Ltd, which owns property in Cat Island and Andros, Bahamas, earmarked for resort development,” the SEC filing said.

Mr Roberts was only on Prospero’s Board for three months’, though, with the SEC filings revealing that he and another director supposedly stepped down on March 11, 2008, “due to personal reasons”. Among his replacements was Mr Cercone.

Mr Roberts, though, denied that he had ever held a formal position with Prospero Group, and said he was never involved in the company’s affairs.

“I don’t ever remember being a director of the group,” he told Tribune Business. “I remember having a meeting with them, but I never agreed or even offered for any position with the company.

“I might have been appointed without my knowledge. He [Hubert Pinder] was a good talker, but I never really was a part of the company per se.”

Mr Roberts said he was invited to a dinner with Mr Pinder by a “colleague who had a connection with him”.

“They spoke about some projects,” the former BEC general manager recalled. “That was the extent of my involvement; just being present to deal with some preliminary discussions relating to the company, but it never came to anything.”

Hinting that he was less than impressed by Mr Pinder and his ‘projects’, Mr Roberts told Tribune Business: “He spoke to all kinds of grandiose things, gold mining and all of that sort of stuff.....

“A lot of Hubert Pinder’s involvement with people was basically a window dressing exercise as opposed to anything concrete or substantial,” he said. “I’m very careful who I have business relationships with, and he was not one of those persons.

“Pinder was a fellow who, in my opinion, doesn’t back up talk with positive actions. Some of the things he said were really far fetched.”

Mr Pinder’s business career was both exotic and controversial, and he has frequently flown across The Tribune’s radar over several decades - starting before Tribune Business was launched as a standalone section.

In 2011, he offered to rescue Sandy Schaefer’s Robin Hood retail format with a company supposedly capitalised by $83.345 million worth of emeralds, diamonds and “precious gem investments” - a move that ultimately proved unsuccessful for all parties.

And the Prospero Group’s funky investment activities ranged from gold mining in the Central African Republic to making water from air and a purported $300 million resort development on 2,500 acres of Rum Cay real estate that has yet to occur.

Tribune Business revealed on Tuesday how Canadian citizen, Per Hahne, had obtained a default judgment against the Prospero Group and Mr Pinder on the basis he had not been paid a single cent of the $5 million price they had agreed to pay for his electronic bracelet invention.

Mr Hahne has been seeking to enforce the March 19, 2010, default judgment from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ever since, but has been thwarted by Mr Pinder’s passing and an inability to trace the latter’s assets.

Now, in a December 14, 2015, demand letter sent by his Canadian attorneys to Mr Cercone and Ms Pinder, he is arguing that - as Prospero directors when events leading to his claim occurred - they are “liable” to pay the judgment.

Mr Cercone, though, denied that he and Ms Pinder had any liability for Mr Hahne’s predicament and alleged loss, as Prospero’s limited liability company status blocked this.

In e-mailed replies to Tribune Business questions, he also refuted Mr Hahne’s claims that he and Ms Pinder were Prospero officers when the negotiations over the electronic bracelet took place.

Mr Cercone said they had also been informed by a Canadian attorney that the Ontario default judgment had been set aside, and accused Mr Hahne of “fabricating realities” in pursuit of his case.

He derided Mr Hahne’s invention as “very theoretical”, and worth far less than the $5 million valuation the Canadian was assigning to it.

And, questioning whether the deal with Prospero/Cavitation Concepts was ever fully consummated, Mr Cercone accused Mr Hahne of trying to “extort” money from himself and his wife by ‘going public’ with his claims.