The Tribune

By TRIBUNE STAFF REPORTER

THE MP said to have chartered the Election Day flight that crashed into the ocean with convicted cocaine smuggler Jonathan “Player” Gardiner aboard, declined to answer questions yesterday, saying only: “No comment right now, buddy.”

When told there were serious questions about how Gardiner, now in custody in the United States, came to be aboard the flight, Kingsley Smith, the PLP MP for West Grand Bahama, said: “We will get to that at some point.”

He would not elaborate.

His refusal to explain the flight leaves unanswered basic questions about who the plane was chartered for, who chartered it, why it was chartered on Election Day, and how Gardiner came to be allegedly found with $30k among the passengers rescued from the downed aircraft.

Mr Smith, who served as parliamentary secretary in the first Davis administration after winning the West Grand Bahama and Bimini by-election, has not been named among the ministers or ministers of state announced so far in the new administration.

Some rescued passengers were reportedly aboard because of a ticketing mix-up involving a scheduled Flamingo Air flight. Fearing they could not get to Grand Bahama to vote, they contacted Mr Smith, who reportedly said they could be accommodated on a chartered plane travelling from Abaco to Freeport.

It is not known who owns the downed Panama-registered Beechcraft King Air 300 twin-prop plane, although Gardiner is reported to own at least one plane in The Bahamas.

Gardiner was rescued along with ten other passengers and the pilot, also a convicted drug smuggler, after the May 12 crash about 80 miles off the Florida coastline in US airspace.

He was allegedly wearing a cross-body bag containing three mobile phones, a small quantity of cash and $30,000 inside an envelope labelled with the handwritten name of “Politician-1”. The name was redacted by US prosecutors.

According to the DEA, the cash was in “bulk Bahamian currency packed in a manner consistent with narcotics proceeds.”

So far, all passengers contacted by The Tribune have declined to comment about the flight, although at least one posted an account of the ordeal on social media.

A photograph posted to social media shows some of those aboard wearing PLP shirts and hats.

It is believed that some passengers were flying to Grand Bahama to vote because that is where they are registered to vote.

Whether they paid to be aboard the chartered aircraft is not known.

One of the rescued passengers, Olympia Outten, revealed at a press conference last Thursday that Mr Smith offered her a seat on a plane she claimed he said he had chartered after she called him about a ticketing mix-up involving tickets she bought to fly from Marsh Harbour, Abaco, to Grand Bahama to vote in the election.

After discovering she had mistakenly been booked on a flight to Bimini, not Grand Bahama, Ms Outten said: “We called Kingsley, our senator…and we tell him, and 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.’ 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.”

The crash has intensified scrutiny of allegations contained in US court filings about drug trafficking, political access and corruption in The Bahamas.

The Tribune’s exclusive story on the US court documents rippled across the country and beyond yesterday. In a published piece, the Miami Herald speculated that the case could lead to additional arrests, including that of an unnamed Bahamian politician.

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.

Social media was abuzz with reaction to The Tribune’s story revealing that “Politician-1” allegedly met an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration source, posing as a drug trafficker, and a drug mule pilot inside a Bahamian “Parliament building” to discuss a US-bound shipment of cocaine said to be worth about $30m.

A DEA special agent’s affidavit, filed in connection with Gardiner’s arrest, also revealed that just two years after being deported from the US, six years into his sentence, Gardiner’s Bahamian construction company “bid for and secured Bahamian government-issued construction projects” and used his buildings to launder the proceeds of his narcotics empire.

Opposition Leader Michael Pintard said yesterday he was not surprised by the allegation that a high-ranking Bahamian politician allegedly met people believed to be members of an international drug smuggling cartel inside the Parliament Building to discuss a major cocaine shipment bound for the United States.

“During the entire election cycle and before, again, we issued warnings about the close relationship between members of this administration and characters that were of interest to police locally and internationally, so I’m not surprised,” he said.

“They have signed multiple contracts with persons who are of interest to the police locally and internationally. I don’t expect them to do anything different than behave the way they’ve been behaving all along.”

A politician identified only as “Politician-1” allegedly met in October 2024 with an undercover DEA source posing as a drug trafficker and a drug mule pilot to discuss a $30m cocaine shipment.

The same politician was referenced in a November 2024 US indictment alleging widespread drug-related corruption involving Bahamian government and police officials.

The affidavit was filed after Gardiner was rescued following the plane crash off the Florida coast with 11 Bahamians and was later arrested by US authorities. Investigators said he was carrying $30,000 in Bahamian currency in an envelope labelled with the name of “Politician-1.”

The US Coast Guard discovered that Gardiner was a wanted man and a key figure in an international drug trafficking network under DEA surveillance, despite previously serving 18 years in a US prison for drug and money laundering offences.

The unanswered questions now extend beyond the crash itself. The Tribune sent Mr Smith questions asking whether he knew Gardiner, whether he knew Gardiner was on the flight and, if so, why. The Tribune also asked whether he knew the pilot, why he chartered the flight on Election Day and whether passengers paid to be aboard.

As of press time, he had not responded.