The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE


Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net
 

WEST Grand Bahama MP Kingsley Smith has flatly denied being “Politician-1”, the unnamed politician US prosecutors say was meant to receive cash found on Jonathan “Player” Gardiner on Election Day.


He also denied ever meeting anyone in a Parliament building to discuss drug shipments.


“Not friggin’ me!” Mr Smith told The Tribune yesterday. 

“Like I say, I deny that. I don’t do nonsense man.”
 

There is no suggestion Mr Smith has done anything wrong.
 His denial came after a US court filing on Friday described Politician-1 for the first time as an incumbent male MP who was reelected on Election Day. 

In the filing, prosecutors said cash recovered from Gardiner was being delivered to Politician-1 on “the day of his reelection”, and that some of the money may have been intended as a bribe. 

Politician-1 has not been named or charged with any offence. 

The plane was on its way to Grand Bahama, where Mr Smith is an MP, when it crash-landed off the Florida coast on election day, May 12.
 

“From day one, remember the swearing in, I denied any wrongdoing and I still stand by that,” Mr Smith said. 

“So, me personally I ain’t getting caught up in no talks.”


He urged the public to heed what he said was the advice of US Ambassador Herschel Walker.


“Bahamian people,” he said, “or people in general will talk and say what they want and believe what they want to say, but let’s take the advice of the US Ambassador Herschel Walker when he said ‘let’s just wait and see.’ You know what I mean?”


Asked whether he knew some critics had identified him as Politician-1, he said: “Yeah, well, I see that, but there’s nothing for me to answer to because I never see anything more or anybody was named as politician one so we can’t worry about what they think and what they believe so I can’t go based on that.”


Mr Smith said he did not know whose name was on the envelope and dismissed the allegations linking him to the case as “only people talking”.


Asked whether he had any personal connection to Gardiner, after a brief pause, he said only: “I’ll leave it as what I said already and not go into any more with this.”


He added: “It is what it is. I’m an attorney by profession you know. I know how these things go.”


Attorney General Wayne Munroe came to Mr Smith’s defence yesterday, saying he had no power that could have helped anyone.


“Kingsley Smith in his last administration, as you know, he came in late, so he wasn’t there in the beginning, and he came in after Obie Wilchcombe died and he had absolutely no power with regard anything to do with law enforcement, anything to do with transport so it’d be difficult to say see how he could have assisted. But as I say, people speculate a lot,” Mr Munroe said.


Mr Smith was first appointed Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry for Grand Bahama, under Minister Ginger Moxey, after winning the November 2023 by-election caused by Mr Wilchcombe’s death. He later became Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Transport under Minister JoBeth Coleby-Davis. 

It is unclear when he was moved, but government releases listed him in that post by October 2025. Before entering politics, he was the country’s chief passport officer.


Asked whether the government had questioned Mr Smith about the allegations, Mr Munroe said no one could know whose name was on the envelope without having seen it.


“You would have no idea. All that he can know is that he was in no position to assist anybody with any nefarious scheme, and he didn’t because the thing that the people are missing is he had no power to assist anyone,” Mr Munroe said.


He said the Davis administration had repeatedly asked the US government to disclose Politician-1’s identity, but the US had refused.


Mr Munroe said he had heard the speculation and had given Mr Smith advice “as to how he may address it”.


“So, for instance, people say a lot of things about me,” he said. “I don’t take my time to argue with people.”


“So you would tell people, for instance, when you row with some of these people on social media, you give them a boost. You let people who follow you then see what they are saying. Right. You give them a degree of credibility. So that’s the kind of conversations you have.”


Mr Smith’s name first surfaced in May. 

Olympia Outten, one of the 11 passengers aboard the Election Day flight from Abaco to Grand Bahama that crashed off Florida, said he helped arrange travel for her family after a ticketing mix-up. 

Mr Smith later called the allegations “salacious, defamatory and ill-conceived”, but he has not said whether he played any role in arranging the flight or whether he knows Gardiner. 

He was heckled by opposition MPs during the ceremonial opening of Parliament in May.
 When asked by The Tribune in May whether he had chartered the election day flight, Mr Smith declined to answer questions, 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, he added: “We will get to that at some point.” He would not elaborate.


There has still been no explanation as to 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.


Gardiner, who previously served a prison sentence in the US for drug and money laundering offences, was arrested after surviving the crash. He had been under DEA surveillance for up to three years as an alleged central figure in an international drug trafficking organisation. 

US court filings allege he used his business to win government contracts and launder drug proceeds.


When he was rescued, Gardiner was allegedly carrying about $30,000 in Bahamian currency, including an envelope bearing Politician-1’s name. 

His lawyers say only about $5,000 was in that envelope and that the rest was campaign-related cash withdrawn from a bank account the day before. 

Prosecutors say the amount makes no difference.
Prosecutors say Politician-1 met an undercover DEA source and a pilot inside a Parliament building in October 2024 to discuss drug shipments.


Gardiner has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent. His trial is set to begin on March 1, 2027.


Free National Movement chairman Dr Duane Sands accused the Progressive Liberal Party of allowing corruption to flourish while the questions go unanswered.

“Who is politician one and who was he connected to?” Dr Sands said in an audio recording released yesterday.

“Many people in this PLP Cabinet and government have some serious questions they have to answer you know. This is turning out to be the most corrupt, sleazy scandal ridden Cabinet since the drug days in the 1980s and 1990s.”