The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

COMMISSIONER of Police Anthony Ferguson yesterday took issue with those criticising the pace of his force’s near year-long investigation into the disappearance of an Oban Energies file.

Addressing reporters, Commissioner Ferguson said he was amazed by the amount of questions that focused on his organisation’s effort, insisting similar investigations take time to be done right.

“Let me just make it quite clear, it is amazing how people would want to question the timeframe that the police department investigates matters. If you look around the world, investigations of such a nature are not done overnight. Some investigations take much longer than some,” he said.

“… We are a professional organisation and it is unfair for somebody to want us to complete a matter in a day. These incidents or offences were not committed in one day, so why would you want it to be completed in one day?”

Commissioner Ferguson said his agency has to be thorough in its investigation of the facts in the matter, contending that the public should demand the same.

A Heads of Agreement was signed for a $5.5 billion Oban oil storage and refinery facility in Grand Bahama on February 19 last year. The proposed project has been dogged by controversy ever since.

Last April, the Nassau Guardian revealed police were investigating the disappearance of an Oban file from the Bahamas Environment, Science and Technology (BEST) Commission.

One day after that report surfaced, Press Secretary Anthony Newbold said the missing file would not hinder the project’s progress, adding the government did not err by failing to disclose to the public the file had gone missing and police had been notified about a week before the matter was leaked to the press.

Promoted as a multi-billion-dollar investment in Grand Bahama, Oban Energies became a lightning rod for criticism early last year when The Tribune revealed the backgrounds of some of the senior Oban officials. Peter Krieger, the company’s former non-executive chairman, later went on to sign the Heads of Agreement on behalf of Satpal Dhunna, the former president of the company, at a public ceremony.

The Tribune had revealed Mr Krieger pleaded guiltily to first-degree felony of organised fraud in 2006. He also faced accusations of misappropriating more than $3.7m of investor monies, which he denied doing.

Mr Dhunna was also dismissed by his former employer, CreditSights, in 2010 for “alleged gross misconduct.”

Environment activists also pushed back against the deal, and took issue with the lack of an environmental impact assessment (EIA), and other concerns being raised over the background and qualifications of some of Oban Energies’ representatives. An EIA has since been completed, according to officials, but it has not been made public.

This fallout prompted an admission from Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis last March that there were missteps in the government process.

“While our heart was in the right place, these missteps should not have happened. We must, we can and we will do better,” Dr Minnis said.

The government and Oban are currently locked in negotiations to rework the Heads of Agreement signed between the two sides last year.

Those talks started last week after months of delays and are expected to continue throughout this week.