The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE unnamed politician whose name was written on an envelope of cash found on Jonathan “Player” Gardiner after the Election Day plane crash was an incumbent male MP who was reelected that day, US prosecutors have alleged for the first time in a New York court filing.

They also claim some of the money recovered from Gardiner may have been intended as a bribe for the politician.

The latest filing came a day after Colombian Lorielmo Steele-Pomare pleaded guilty in the same case, becoming only the second of the 13 men named in the 2024 indictment at the heart of the case to admit his role.

Steele-Pomare, described by prosecutors as a narcotics broker who introduced Colombian and Bahamian traffickers to one another and worked closely with multiple corrupt police officers, withdrew his not guilty plea before US District Judge Lewis J Liman on Thursday and pleaded guilty under a signed plea agreement to the first count of a superseding indictment.

He will remain in custody until he is sentenced on February 17, 2027, two weeks before the substantive trial begins on March 1.

In Friday’s filing, prosecutors said the cash tied to Gardiner was being delivered to “Politician-1” on “the day of his reelection”, and argued the timing strengthened their case. That it came on Election Day rather than during the campaign, they wrote, “in fact supports, rather than undercuts, the government’s theory” that it was a bribe.

Prosecutors also told Judge Lewis J Liman that the $30,000 found on Gardiner should not be returned to him, as his lawyer has asked. They said the cash is being held in a DEA evidence vault and will be used as evidence at his trial on March 1, 2027, and that it would be forfeited if he is convicted.

Politician-1 has not been named or charged with any offence. US court documents identify him only by that label, and his name was redacted from a photograph of the envelope released by prosecutors in May. Earlier filings described the cash as packed in a manner consistent with drug proceeds. Friday’s document is the most direct statement yet that prosecutors believe the money may have been a bribe. It is also the first to indicate that Politician-1 is a man and an incumbent who stood in the May 12 general election.

“At least some of the currency appears to have been earmarked for a Bahamian politician and thus could have been a bribe payment for the purpose of permitting or facilitating the defendant’s continued narcotics trafficking,” prosecutors wrote.

They said the case includes allegations of cash bribes to Bahamian government officials in connection with drug trafficking, “and the discovery includes evidence that such bribes were paid”.

Prosecutors said Politician-1 was introduced to a confidential source during a recorded meeting in or about November 2024 about a planned shipment of 900 to 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, and that Gardiner’s co-conspirators had introduced a purported drug trafficker to him. Earlier US filings alleged Politician-1 met an undercover DEA source and a drug pilot inside a Parliament building in October 2024 to discuss a cocaine shipment worth about $30m.

Gardiner was rescued by the US Coast Guard with ten other people after the Beechcraft 300 King Air plane they were travelling in crashed into waters off Florida at about 12.05pm on May 12. US Customs and Border Protection found three mobile phones, a notebook and about $30,000 in Bahamian currency in a cross-body bag he was carrying. He was charged two days later.

His lawyers have argued that only about $5,000 was in the envelope bearing Politician-1’s name, and that the DEA agent who sought a warrant to search his phones wrongly suggested all $30,000 was. They say the rest was withdrawn from a bank account the day before the crash, and have previously described it as campaign-related cash being moved on the day of a national election.

Prosecutors said the amount made no difference. What mattered, they said, was that Gardiner was carrying bulk cash, whether $5,000 or $30,000, in an envelope bearing the name of a politician who had been introduced to a source to discuss a cocaine shipment.

They said that even if the money had come from a bank account, that would not weaken their case, because Gardiner allegedly used his business to launder drug proceeds. The bank receipt his lawyers submitted, prosecutors added, shows a withdrawal from the account of a business that Gardiner has disclaimed owning. His lawyer has previously said the money came from the Bank of The Bahamas account of his contracting company, Top Notch Builders.

Gardiner had also asked that, if prosecutors claimed the right to seize the cash as forfeitable property, he be given a hearing on whether it could be released to pay for his lawyers. Prosecutors said the request was moot because the money is being held as evidence. They added that money subject to forfeiture cannot be released to pay for a defence.

The filing describes Gardiner as playing a “critical role” in moving cocaine through The Bahamas. Prosecutors say he oversaw drug pilots and indirectly owned the aircraft they used. They also say he controlled a construction business that won government contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, using his connections in government to launder his drug money. They also describe him as an international supplier of cocaine to a Georgia-based drug trafficking organisation.

A confidential source told investigators that Gardiner was involved in a 2023 drug load in Rum Cay, during which the plane carrying the cocaine crashed and its pilot died, the filing states.

Prosecutors said officers who inventoried Gardiner’s waterlogged notebook opened its cover to dry it out and saw what appeared to be notations about payments. Among the evidence handed to his lawyers are recordings of Gardiner’s jail calls since his arrest, records of aircraft linked to him and to drug seizures in The Bahamas, and a confidential source recording in which co-defendant Luis Fernando Orozco-Toro allegedly referred to Gardiner as “Player” while discussing a planned cocaine shipment. Prosecutors said several witnesses will testify against him at trial.

Gardiner’s lawyers want the court to throw out evidence from his phones and notebook, order prosecutors to explain why they are holding the cash, and force them to give more details of their case. Among other things, the defence asked whether Gardiner used the alias “Progress”, and whether prosecutors allege that the May 12 flight itself was part of the drug conspiracy. They also sought records showing when the DEA, the Coast Guard or other US agencies first learned Gardiner was on the plane. Prosecutors dismissed that last request as part of “baseless conspiracy theories regarding the May 12, 2026 plane crash”.

Prosecutors admitted the DEA agent’s sworn statement had wrongly given the date of Gardiner’s arrest as May 16 rather than May 14. They called it a clerical error that did not affect the case.

They asked Judge Liman to deny all the motions and reject the bid to suppress evidence without a hearing.

Gardiner was added to a case that began with the November 2024 unsealing of an indictment against 13 men, 11 of them Bahamians. Among them was former Royal Bahamas Police Force Chief Superintendent Elvis Curtis, who supervised police operations at airports nationwide. Prosecutors say the DEA has been investigating since at least 2022. They allege that drug trafficking groups flew cocaine from South America into remote Bahamian airstrips under the protection of local officials, including high-ranking police officers, before moving it by boat to the US.

The indictment alleges that on or about October 18, 2023, Curtis and former police sergeant Prince Symonette each accepted about $10,000 in cash as a down payment for helping with what they understood to be a future 600-kilogram cocaine shipment through the New Providence airport.

Gardiner, a convicted drug trafficker, is charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, firearms possession and firearms conspiracy, and faces separate charges in Georgia.

The discovery of the envelope triggered weeks of political fallout after the election. Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis declined to answer questions about the defence’s claim that the cash was campaign-related. Foreign Affairs Minister and PLP chairman Fred Mitchell has said it is irresponsible to suggest there is “something nefarious going on with the Progressive Liberal Party or any of our politicians”.

Former Royal Bahamas Defence Force Chief Petty Officer Darrin Roker was the first defendant in the case to plead guilty. He was sentenced to four years in prison.