The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

FTX’s Bahamian liquidators have been boosted in their quest to maximise real estate recoveries for creditors after a Supreme Court judge ruled they and others have “strong prospects of success” in defeating a claim that so far has blocked the sale of a high-end West Bay Street property.

Acting justice Gail Lockhart-Charles KC, in a March 13, 2026, verdict ruled that a UK investor’s claim to have an ownership interest in the 5.295-acre Ocean Terrace property, located east of Caves Village, has “a serious hurdle to overcome” including the “formidable” defence afforded by the Limitation Act as their action was filed some six years after the deadline for doing so had expired.

Ocean Terrace is among the near-40 high-end Bahamian properties that the liquidators for FTX Digital Markets, the collapsed crypto currency exchange’s local subsidiary, have been seeking to sell in a bid to recover and return assets to former clients and creditors. It was acquired for $17.435m by FTX Property Holdings, the subsidiary created by the now-jailed Sam Bankman-Fried and his associates, to purchase and hold around $256m worth of Bahamian real estate.

However, efforts by Brian Simms KC, the Lennox Paton attorney and partner, and the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) duo of Kevin Cambridge and Peter Greaves, who are collectively overseeing the winding-up of FTX Digital Markets, to offload this valuable condominium complex have been held up by two separate legal actions initiated by investors who allege they paid multi-million sums to a previous Ocean Terrace owner to purchase units in it.

Acting justice Lockhart-Charles’ ruling relates to the action initiated by Wyndhams Property Bahamas Ltd, a Bahamian-domiciled International Business Company (IBC) beneficially owned by UK investor Stephen James Horn and his wife, Victoria, who are seeking to enforce two 2008 sales agreements for the purchase of two Ocean Terrace condominium units from then-owner, North Andros Assets. That entity has now, though, been struck from the Companies Register.

The Horns, and Wyndhams property, have named as defendants all persons and companies connected to North Andros Assets, including the late attorney Thomas Evans KC and his law firm, Evans & Company, as well as FTX Property Holdings, which is Ocean Terrace’s present owner after acquiring the property from an affiliate of David Kosoy’s Sterling Asset Management. The latter are not named as defendants.

However, acting justice Lockhart-Charles said the problem facing Wyndhams is that North Andros Assets, which it dealt with as vendor, did not own Ocean Terrace when the 2008 sales agreements were drawn-up and signed because a Miami-based lender, Cordell Funding, had a loan secured on the development via a mortgage.

“In the events that transpired, North Andros Assets never lodged the declaration required to create the condominium units. Indeed, it was never in a position to do so, as it was neither the legal owner of the property in 2008 at the date of the agreements for sale, nor at any time after,” she recalled.

“Cordell parted with the property in 2013 when it exercised its power of sale to convey the 5.295-acre parcel in fee simple to the ninth defendant, The Palms West Bay Ltd. The property was subsequently conveyed by The Palms to the tenth defendant, Ocean Terrace, in 2014, and eventually to [FTX Property Holdings] in 2022.

“The central difficulty that Wyndhams faced was that it had contracted with a vendor that did not have legal title to the property the subject of the purchase agreement and was therefore wholly incapable of completing the sale…. The property was not legally owned by North Andros Assets, the declaration was never lodged by North Andros Assets, the condominium was never constituted by North Andros Assets, and there were never any units owned or created by North Andros Assets.”

She referred to Wyndhams’ “futile efforts” to enforce the sales agreements in 2012 when it spent $500,000 on Bahamian legal fees. However, its filing of the latest legal claim in 2024 has prevented FTX’s liquidator trio from being able to market Ocean Terrace for sale and dispose of it.

But acting justice Lockhart-Charles said Wyndhams and its owners “face very significant hurdles” to succeeding with their claim, not least because the Supreme Court had struck-out a similar claim to create “a powerful reason to doubt the viability of the claim against FTX Property Holdings”.

That claim was brought by Leo International Holdings, an entity which Tribune Business records shows is linked to Dr Fabrizio Zanaboni, who headed Stellar Energy, the waste-to-energy entity behind a proposal for the New Providence landfall that was at the heart of the Renward Wells Letter of Intent (LOI) saga. Dr Zanaboni has launched legal action in relation to Ocean Terrace before.

Acting justice Lockhart-Charles said of Leo’s Ocean Terrace claim: “The court held that the plaintiffs' claims did not create an equitable interest in the land capable of binding subsequent purchasers. This issue will be a serious hurdle for the claimant [Wyndhams] to overcome in the present case.” And Wyndhams had also filed its claim some six years after the Limitation Act deadline would have expired in 2018, given that the ‘cause of action’ had arisen in 2012.

“I note that the claimant asserts that the causes of action include fraudulent breach of trust, for which there is no limitation period. I find the breach of trust arguments to be tenuous at best,” the judge wrote. “The pleadings with regard to fraud are also, to my mind, less than adequate.

“Unsurprisingly, some of the defendants have filed strike-out applications. It would seem to me that these strike-out applications, similar to the Leo strike out application, have strong prospects of success….

“Taking all these factors into account, including the apparent limitation difficulties, the tenuous nature of the trust arguments, the inadequate pleading of fraud, and the problematic proprietary interest claim, I consider that the claims against the applicants will face very significant hurdles.”

FTX’s Bahamian liquidators, who will likely take encouragement from acting justice Lockhart-Charles’s ruling even though it does not deal with the claim’s merits, told the Supreme Court of Ocean Terrace in a prior report: “The joint official liquidators are aware of an allegation regarding a trespassing claim relative to all that ‘piece, parcel or lot of land containing 60 acres [including] Ocean Terrace (east of the Caves), West Bay Street” and demanding the joint official liquidators vacate the same.

“The joint official liquidators consider such claims, including the assertion of interest in the Ocean Terrace property, to be wholly unmeritorious and vexatious in nature. The joint official liquidators are considering taking legal action on behalf of FTX Property Holdings to ensure that any sale of the Ocean Terrace property can proceed securely and without interference.”