The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Digital Editor

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

FINANCE Minister Michael Halkitis yesterday confirmed that he previously served as a director for Top Notch Builders after initially denying any involvement with the company when questioned by The Tribune a day earlier.

His admission comes amid repeated silence on emerging details of the election day plane crash off the Florida coast, and mounting political scrutiny over allegations contained in a US Drug Enforcement Administration affidavit alleging links between government figures and individuals accused of involvement in drug trafficking.

Documents from The Bahamas’ registry of records have linked Top Notch to the Election Day plane crash victim Eric Gardiner, who has been arrested and charged with drug offences by the US authorities.

Up to press time, both the Free National Movement and the Coalition of Independents had called for Mr Halkitis' resignation over his admission.

“As a private citizen I was involved in financial consulting and corporate services consulting,” Mr Halkitis said during an Office of the Prime Minister press briefing.

“I was approached to provide consulting and directorship services to Top Notch Builders, in particular setting up proper corporate governance procedures and structures.”

Mr Halkitis said he was not hired by Gardiner, and was approached by an attorney.

He said his involvement began in mid-2019, but the company suspended operations by April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I resigned as director of that company and all the other directorships that I held in 2021,” he added.

Mr Halkitis furthered official records at the Registrar General’s Department would show the company’s corporate structure and ownership.

“All corporate documents are available from the Registrar General’s Department,” he said. “Anybody who’s interested in the complete story can get the complete set of documents which not only show who the directors are but who the shareholders are, who the owners of the company were at the time, and they would see that it’s not who some people say it was.”

Mr Halkitis served as Minister of State for Finance from 2012 to 2017 during the last Christie administration. He was sworn in as Minister of Economic Affairs and Leader of Government Business in the Senate following the 2021 general election.

Top Notch Builders is the firm that secured the $35m deal to construct the Government’s Eight Mile Rock administrative complex one day before the May 10, 2017, general election. Corporate records revealed the firm also owns Complete Construction, the company developing the Government’s flagship Carmichael Village affordable housing project that got underway last term.

In a 2017 document, Gardiner testified that he did not own a single share in the company despite being “the president and a director” of Top Notch Builders. He asserted Top Notch Builders is owned 100 percent by Paradise Productions Inc Company, an entity fully-owned by Samson Hield, who has been listed in previous Tribune Business reports as the “lead contractor” for the Eight Mile Rock PPP deal.

There is no suggestion that any of Top Notch or Complete Construction’s officers and directors have done anything wrong, and there is nothing linking them to Gardiner’s alleged activities or the charges against him.

At the House of Assembly on Wednesday, The Tribune asked Mr Halkitis whether he was ever involved with Top Notch or served as a president of the company.

Mr Halkitis said: "Never a president of the company, and I think he (Eric Gardiner) was the president of the company or someone else was the president of the company. I was never employed by the company."

When pressed further on Wednesday about how Mr Gardiner, a convicted drug trafficker, was able to obtain contracts with the government, Mr Halkitis added: "I don't want to comment on that."

For his part, FNM leader Michael Pintard accused the finance minister of misleading the public about the extent of his involvement with Top Notch Builders.

Mr Pintard argued Mr Halkitis was “not simply a consultant and director” but served as president of the company, arguing that the role would have placed him at the centre of its operations and corporate structure.

The FNM leader further alleged that Mr Halkitis faced a conflict of interest because Complete Construction later secured “tens of millions of dollars” in government housing contracts while he sat in Cabinet.

Mr Pintard said: "This immediately places him in a direct conflict of interest position, especially in light of the fact that as a sitting Minister and then Senator, he never made the public aware of his role in that company and the steps he took to recuse himself from any consideration."

He added: “Halkitis must go!”