The Tribune

By DAVID LEIGH

Tribune Editor-in-Chief.

daleigh@tribunemedia.net

A HIGH-RANKING Bahamian politician brazenly met with members of what they believed to be an international drug smuggling cartel to discuss a huge upcoming shipment of US-bound cocaine - inside the Bahamian Parliament Building, The Tribune can reveal today.

The politician, identified only as ‘Politician-1,’ allegedly met in October 2024 with an undercover US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) source posing as a drug trafficker, along with a drug mule pilot, to discuss the shipment said to be worth about $30m. This is the same politician referenced in an explosive November 2024 indictment that alleged widespread corruption in the government and police force related to drugs.

An affidavit filed by a DEA Special Agent on Friday comes after a remarkable turn of events which saw convicted drugs smuggler, Jonathan Eric Gardiner, among 11 Bahamians rescued by the US military when their twin-propellered aircraft plummeted into the sea when both its engines failed during an Election Day storm 80 miles off the Florida coast.

Gardiner – nicknamed ‘Player’ – was 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. According to the DEA the cash was in ‘bulk Bahamian currency packed in a manner consistent with narcotics proceeds.’

US Coast Guards quickly discovered Gardiner was a wanted man and had been under surveillance by the DEA as a central character in an international drugs smuggling cartel - despite previously having been jailed for 18 years in the US for similar drug and money laundering offences.

He was arrested, and on Friday, appeared in court in Orlando, Florida, charged under US drug laws dealing with attempts and conspiracies involving international drug trafficking offences. Some of the charges relate to a federal procedural law allowing criminal cases to be prosecuted internally even though they happened outside of the US.

The deposition from a DEA special agent also reveals that just two years after being deported from the US, 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.

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.

One of Curtis’ co-accused, Colombian Luis Fernando Orozco-Toro, 58, knew Gardiner and is said to have told an undercover DEA source, in a secretly videotaped meeting, that “Gardiner was currently building government buildings; and claimed that Gardiner was reportedly trying to keep his involvement below the radar of law enforcement.”

During a meeting on or about November 6, 2024, the DEA operative met with one of Curtis’ co-accused, former RBDF chief petty officer Darrin Roker, and others regarding an upcoming cocaine shipment. Roker ‘accepted a payment of $20,000to assist’ with the cocaine shipment,” the affidavit states. He later pleaded guilty to his role in the conspiracy and was jailed for 48 months.

According to the indictment, unsealed in November last year, Curtis claimed a “high-ranking Bahamian politician” would assist in moving the drugs with Bahamian law enforcement officials in exchange for a US$2m payment. Again, the politician was not identified.

It would appear that Gardiner’s company won contracts despite him being a convicted felon in the US, jailed in 2008 after being charged with 21 separate offences related to an international drugs conspiracy.

In 2017, less than two years after returning to The Bahamas, the company of which he is president and a director, New Providence-based Top Notch Builders, was awarded a $34 million ten-year-contract to rent the Eight Mile Rock administrative complex in Grand Bahama, which at the time was being constructed through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) agreement. The contract also included a $535,000 ‘handover fee.’ Reports suggest the deal was one of many multi-million dollar public-private sector partnerships awarded to Top Notch by the government of the time. The contract was awarded under the Christie administration, days before the 2017 general election, won by the FNM’s Hubert Minnis.

Gardiner’s extraordinary case is now under the jurisdiction of the US Attorneys, Southern District of New York (SDNY). He is scheduled to appear in court again on Thursday.

Along with the DEA agent’s deposition, the SDNY released a photograph of tightly stacked $100 and $50 notes – part of the $30,000 haul - alongside a bag which has the politician’s handwritten name on it, although it has been redacted with ‘Politician-1.’ A second photograph shows the Caterpillar cross-body bag Gardiner was wearing.

It is unclear who the plane was chartered for, why it was chartered, or how Gardiner came to be aboard. Some rescued passengers were reportedly aboard because of a ticketing mix-up involving a scheduled Flamingo Air flight. It is not known who owns the Panama-registered Beechcraft King Air 300 twin-prop plane, although Eric Gardiner is reported to own at least one plane in The Bahamas.

To add further intrigue, piloting the aircraft was another drugs felon, Ian Nixon, convicted in Florida in May 2007, of possession and conspiracy to supply cocaine into the US. He was freed in June 2011, then deported to The Bahamas. His US FAA private pilots’ licence was permanently revoked and although he initially found a job as a pilot with Pineapple Air on his return to The Bahamas, he was later sacked after his local licence was also revoked. Whether he was flying without a pilots’ licence when the plane crashed last week is not known.

A number of revelations are made in the deposition submitted by DEA Special Agent Michael Coleman into the US District Court, Southern District of New York (SDNY), on Friday.

On October 3, 2024, a meeting took place inside Parliament between ‘Politician-1’ and the undercover DEA source and an drugs pilot mule pilot. It is alleged its purpose was to discuss the shipment into the United States of a massive consignment of cocaine with an estimated street value, at today’s pricing, of $18.6 million.

The identity of the person identified as ‘Politician-1’ by a Special Agent with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), is now once again the centre of intense speculation on numerous social media sites. US prosecutors have again chosen to withhold the name. Whether it has been shared with the Bahamian Government or the Royal Bahamas Police Force is not known.

The allegation came after five men - Curtis, 51, as well as alleged cocaine traffickers William Simeon, 52, Orozco-Toro, Ulrique Jean Baptiste, 53, and Lorielmo Steele-Pomare, 59 – were charged with cocaine importation conspiracy, possessing and carrying firearms and firearms conspiracy. Prosecutors claim that the scheme, which ran from May 2021 to late 2024, involved paying off “corrupt” Bahamian officials to allow the conspirators to ship drugs to America. All are awaiting trial.

In January, another of those involved in the conspiracy, Darrin Roker, a former chief petty officer with the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, was jailed for four years for facilitating cocaine smuggling to the US.

DEA Special Agent Michael Coleman wrote in Friday’s deposition: “Based on my training and experience and my participation in this and other narcotics investigations, the bulk cash recovered from Gardiner’s bag is packed in a manner consistent with narcotics proceeds; moreover, I am aware that the Charged Defendants and other members of the DTO (Drug Trafficking Organisation) have claimed access to, and protection and support from, Bahamian politicians and government officials, and that certain of the Charged Defendants (including Chief Petty Officer Roker) accepted payments in or about 2024 in connection with planned drug shipments.”