The Tribune

When Jonathan ‘Player’ Gardiner left Nassau on the now infamous election day charter flight early on the morning of May 12 – to do whatever it was he was tasked with doing that day - the last place on earth the big-time drug kingpin would have wanted to end up was in the United States of America.

For two very good reasons. Just over a decade earlier, in 2014, he was deported from the US and ordered never to return. He was eight years into an 18-year prison sentence for being a member of a major drug trafficking ring smuggling cocaine from South America, through The Bahamas and into the US.

Secondly, on the day of the crash, he was alleged to be carrying $30,000 in cash, ‘packed in a manner consistent with narcotics proceeds,’ according to a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent. Exactly why he was carrying the money is not known, but it’s a safe bet to say that US authorities will have asked.

That morning, Gardiner arrived bright and early at Jet Nassau, a private jet terminal at Lynden Pindling International Airport. Jet Nassau is what’s known as a Fixed-based operator (FBO), a company specialising in operating private and charter jets for those wanting to avoid the hassle of commercial terminals; somewhere from which people can easily fly to neighbouring islands, or abroad, on private or chartered aircraft.

Around 8.15am, Gardiner met for the first time with pilot Ian Nixon, who a little over 24 hours earlier had received a phone call from a fellow pilot asking if he was available for an island-hopping job the following day. Mr Nixon, a freelance pilot who also runs his own family business selling solar panels, was not told for exactly who he would be working. But, having been told there were multiple flights involved, and thus a nice little payday, he happily took the job. What he did understand was that he would be carrying PLP supporters to vote in the election, as is common for both parties at election time.

At Jet Nassau, it became obvious to Mr Nixon that Gardiner who seemed ‘friendly enough,’ was in charge of the day’s operations. He was the one with the flight plans, which he handed over. Nassau to Marsh Harbour, Abaco, on to Freeport, Grand Bahama, then back to Nassau. Later in the day he would return to Freeport to pick up Gardiner, and again return him to Nassau. It is still not known who chartered the plane, although what seems certain is that it was chartered to ferry PLP supporters to vote in Abaco and Grand Bahama. “It was a flight to move passengers to vote,” said Mr Nixon.

Quite why Gardiner was on the flight, directing operations, is not known. It’s also not known who asked him to be there. After being deported from the US, the now 58-year-old appears to have quickly done well for himself. Just three years later, in 2017, he was listed as ‘President and a director’ of Nassau-based construction company, Top Notch Builders Ltd, which that year secured a $34m public-private partnership (PPP) deal with the Government. It was signed the day before the general election. Other documents seen by Tribune Business show that Top Notch Builders received a ten-acre Crown Land grant involving property on the northern side of Adelaide Road on February 15, 2022, which would have been almost six months after the September 2021 general election was held.

According to a May 15 indictment from the Southern District of New York, Gardiner also allegedly returned to a business with which he was well acquainted – drug smuggling. For at least the last three years, he was the subject of a DEA undercover cocaine smuggling operation, with drugs from Columbia transiting through The Bahamas and on to Drug Trafficking Organisation (DTO) in Georgia, via Miami. The indictment from US prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, claims that in recent years, Gardiner used his businesses to launder money from the proceeds of his crimes.

Returning to election day, the first flight to Marsh Harbour was uneventful. Gardiner deplaned with the majority of passengers at Marsh Harbour, and appeared to be the person rounding up a new set of passengers for the onward journey to Freeport.

As has been well-documented, that flight ran into huge problems, with both engines and its navigation equipment failing and with pilot Nixon being forced to make a crash landing at sea. After nearly five hours floating adrift in life rafts, Mr Nixon, Gardiner and his fellow nine passengers, were rescued by the crew of a US military helicopter and flown to Melbourne Orlando International Airport at Melbourne, Florida.

Everyone was first checked out at a local hospital. Then all the passengers – except Gardiner and Mr Nixon – were fingerprinted and officially checked into the US by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Says Mr Nixon: “Yea, they fingerprint everyone else beside me and Gardiner. I find that really strange. I was thinking they probably knew who he was from his ID. I had my ID with me, my driver’s license, so they could see who I was.” But nothing untoward happened.

“The only thing they asked me was if I was carrying any cash, which I wasn’t.”

It seems probable that Gardiner would have been asked the same question but whether or not he declared anything is not known. US prosecutors later revealed he was carrying $30,000 inside an envelope containing the name of a Bahamian politician, the mysterious ‘Politician-1.’

After that, those not detained in the medical centre for treatment, including Mr Nixon and Gardiner, were shown to a large, open room. There were tables and airport-style chairs to sit on.

“Quite a few people had bags they brought from the plane – I didn’t have mine; it went down with the airplane,” said Mr Nixon. He is not aware of any of the survivors being searched. The Red Cross provided food and refreshments.

Mr Nixon said there was never a sense that they were being held against their will or that anyone was going to be arrested.

“There were CBP officers walking about but the room wasn’t locked,” he said.

After a restless night, with little sleep, the party was told they would be flown back to Nassau around lunch-time.

“It was about ten minutes before the flight was due to leave that they came and got me and Gardiner and put us in a cell,” adds Mr Nixon, who says no explanation was given.

“All I said to Gardiner was ‘are they lying to us or something?’” recalls Mr Nixon.

He wondered whether his detention was because he had been deported for a drugs conviction twenty years earlier – though his return to the US on this occasion was obviously totally unplanned. About ten minutes later, Mr Nixon was freed and allowed to join the passengers on the flight returning to Nassau, leaving just Gardiner in the cell.

Mr Nixon said he had no knowledge of his passenger’s previous arrest, charges or deportation. It is not known why Gardiner was not arrested on arrival at Melbourne airport, only the following day, but it would seem new information about his alleged ongoing criminal activities must have come to light overnight.

It was only when Mr Nixon returned to Nassau that he discovered, along with everyone else, that Gardiner had been arrested and indicted on drug smuggling conspiracy charges. It was revealed he was carrying three phones and a cross-body bag with approximately $30,000 in Bahamian currency, the US DEA said. The cash was packed ‘in a manner consistent with narcotics proceeds,’ DEA Special Agent Michael Coleman said in charging documents. The money had a handwritten label of a person's name – which was redacted in court documents and referred to as ‘Politician-1.’

Gardiner, a known international narcotics trafficker based in the Bahamas, according to the DEA, appeared in court in Orlando, Florida, on Friday May 15. He was charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, court documents, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), revealed. He is alleged to be a major supplier of drugs for a Georgia-based Drug Trafficking Organisation (DTO), supplying narcotics from South America, passing through The Bahamas, and into the US. According to DEA wire taps, he allegedly sent nine kilograms of cocaine through Miami in February 2023 to Georgia.

Although he was scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, May 21, that hearing never happened. The day before, a SDNY press officer told The Tribune: “There are no scheduled events at this time.”

Adding to the intrigue, no one has so far admitted to chartering the plane, which was largely carrying PLP supporters to vote in their own constituencies on different islands on election day, as is common practice for both parties. Why there is so much secrecy over who chartered the plane is unclear.

Other than one passenger, Olympia Outten, who gave a dramatic account of the rescue at a press conference the day after the crash, no one else has spoken. A number of her fellow passengers who posted accounts on Facebook declined to speak when contacted by The Tribune. Some said their lawyers had advised against it. A number of the passengers were put up in an all-inclusive beach resort after being flown back to Nassau. It is not known exactly why or at whose expense.

The Bahamas government has officially requested that US authorities provide information regarding the ongoing investigation, which links ‘Politician-1’ and local law enforcement officers to a multimillion-dollar international drug trafficking and smuggling ring based in Georgia. Details were revealed by a DEA special agent in an 11-page affidavit after Gardiner was arrested in Florida.

Gardiner’s arrest appears to connect him to the Georgia-based drug syndicate named in the November 2024 indictment of former Royal Bahamas Police Force chief superintendent Elvis Nathaniel Curtis and others on federal narcotics and firearms charges.

That indictment alleged the group trafficked drugs through The Bahamas and into the United States with help from corrupt Bahamian government officials, including politicians and senior members of the police and defence forces.

Last week, PLP MP for West Grand Bahama, Kingsley Smith, issued a statement about his alleged role in arranging the election day flight calling it “salacious, defamatory and ill-conceived.” But he did not actually address whether or not he played any role in arranging the flight, saying only: “We will get to that at some point.”

Mr Smith’s name surfaced after Ms Outten claimed he helped arrange travel for her family on the flight after a ticketing mix-up.

She claimed a flight agent mistakenly booked her and her family on the wrong flight, prompting her to contact Mr Smith. “He told me, ‘Miss Outten don’t worry, we sending in a charter, a charter coming in from Nassau, you and your children can jump on that charter because he sending them there for us,’” she said. “That’s how we got to go on that plane. Me and my sons weren’t supposed to be on that plane. We were supposed to be on Flamingo Air.”

Mr Smith said he was aware of news stories about him and called them “an obvious attempt to argue a negative.”

A statement from the Office of the Prime Minister last week made clear the DEA has kept the government and local law enforcement completely in the dark regarding the three-year narcotics investigation, much of it with undercover ‘co-operating sources’ working on Bahamian soil.

Yesterday (Monday), Foreign Affairs Minister and PLP chairman Fred Mitchell said in his daily voice note that there had been a lot of ‘uninformed and unfounded speculation and chat’ about the plane crash, led by FNM chairman Dr Duane Sands, especially about the $30,000 cash alleged to have been found on the plane.

“The speculations are fanciful and again are an example of people putting two and two together and making it five,” he said. He said he and FNM leader Michael Pintard were like ‘donkeys braying at the moon,’ and ‘engaging like potcake dogs after you have left the yard barking from the sidelines.’

He said: “All campaign long, they were hoping that the US Ambassador and the US Government, supported by the local and international and US press, would intervene to cause some fatal blow to the PLP’s election chances. That failed during the campaign, but on election day there was a misadventure of a plane crash and cash found, allegedly, with a politician’s name on it, unnamed.”

He predicted that the story would become ‘a big fat nothing burger’ when the truth eventually came out.

However, Shanendon Cartwright, Deputy Leader of the FNM, said some of the allegations made against Gardiner ‘strike at the core of public trust in our democracy.’ He added: “For the good of our country and the Bahamian people Prime Minister you must act now!

“As Prime Minister he has an obligation and duty to determine within his power and lawful means who possibly in his cabinet , who in his caucus is Politician-1. The credibility of this government, our parliamentary institution, and the rule of law itself is on the line. The government should request assistance from the Royal Bahamas Police Force Anti-Corruption Unit and invite oversight from an independent. Parliament cannot be a venue for criminal negotiations.”