The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Briland tourism operator is alleging that interference by its estranged former US business partner has left it struggling to generate sufficient revenues to survive and pay-off more than $700,000 in unpaid tax arrears owed to the Department of Inland Revenue.

Julian ‘Shaq’ Gibson, operator of the Conch & Coconut tour operator, destination management and visitor “concierge” business, in a February 11, 2026, affidavit filed with the Bahamian Supreme Court asserted that multiple trademark violation complaints filed by Pablo Conde have been “extremely time-consuming and disruptive” to operations on Harbour Island because it has forced him to constantly search for new website and booking platform hosts.

The documents form part of the latest battle in the pair’s increasingly acrimonious and messy business partnership break-up. Each is accusing the other of breaching court Orders on both sides of the Florida straits, and urging separate judicial forums to hold the other party in ‘contempt of court’ and impose sanctions upon them.

Mr Gibson, in the Supreme Court, is accusing Mr Conde of breaching the November 14, 2025, Order by Justice Simone Fitzcharles which mandated that he and his US-domiciled companies be barred from interfering or intervening with Mr Gibson and the latter’s Harbour Island-based operations until the full trial over the disputes created by the “messy dissolution” of their business partnership occurs.

But Mr Conde, for his part, is countering that Mr Gibson and the Briland-based business are also violating a December 22, 2025, order issued by the south Florida federal district court. In that case, which is dealing with exactly the same dispute and subject matter as the Supreme Court, Mr Conde is alleging that his former Bahamian partner breached the stipulation not to solicit customers, or market or promote its business to clients, who were previously secured by the US citizen when they were in partnership.

Both sides are thus pushing for sanctions to be imposed against the other on their ‘home ground’ - the judicial system of the countries where each is a citizen. Mr Gibson is alleging that Mr Conde’s purported interference with the companies hosting Conch & Coconut’s website began both immediately before and after the two sides met “face-to-face” in Miami for a meeting called in an effort to settle their dispute without further legal battles.

Mr Gibson claimed that, just 24 hours before the meeting, he was informed by GoDaddy that it would “suspend web hosting services” for Conch & Coconut with effect from 1pm the following day, February 3, 2026, after it received a “trademark infringement complaint” from Mr Conde and his US-based companies. This was despite the south Florida court’s December 2025 ruling that the latter had “not shown a substantial likelihood of succeeding” in such claims against the Briland-based tourism operator.

Conch & Coconut secured SiteGround as a web hosting services replacement for GoDaddy. “During the afternoon of Tuesday, February 3, 2026, I had a face-to-face meeting with the first defendant [Mr Conde] for approximately two hours in Miami, Florida, for the purpose of exploring possible settlement between the parties herein,” Mr Gibson revealed.

“Despite that I thought the meeting was productive, and showed a good faith effort to resolve all of the litigation, the first and second defendants lodged another trademark infringement complaint, this time with SiteGround, the new website host for [Conch & Coconut].” This gave Mr Gibson and his company 72 hours to respond, but the website remains online via SiteGround.

“The second infringement complaint that was submitted is further evidence of the defendants’ continued willful and malicious interference with the claimants’ businesses and continued defamation of the claimants’ business practice with that note that was put on the first page of the website controlled by the defendants,” he alleged.

“The clear intent of these repeated complaints is to disrupt and destabilise the claimants’ operations by depriving [Conch & Coconut] of an active website, which is integral to its business and its ability to serve customers….. Consequent to the second infringement complaint, my team and I had to immediately research and find another website service provider in case SiteGround ceased hosting [Conch & Coconut’s website.

“The defendants’ interfering actions have caused the claimants time and money trying to combat those actions and have taken my immediate attention away from building and maintaining the [Conch & Coconut] business and into crisis mode to keep it operational,” Mr Gibson continued.

“Also, on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 4, 2026, at 1.42 pm, I spoke with the first defendant [Mr Conde] by telephone and asked him why he submitted the second infringement complaint after we had agreed to start settlement talks. The first defendant admitted that he submitted a complaint to SiteGround and stated that he had to protect his own interests.”

While GoDaddy ultimately dismissed Mr Conde’s copyright complaint on February 5, 2026, and offered to host Conch & Coconut’s website once again, Mr Gibson asserted: “These continuous and repetitive trademark infringement complaints have been extremely time-consuming and disruptive to the second claimant’s [Conch & Coconut] business.

“While attempting to operate the second Claimant’s business, being a business which this court has ordered should not be interfered with, I have been compelled to incur additional costs and professional fees, and to divert time and resources away from generating revenue for the second Claimant.

“The second claimant and I still have a debt owing to Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) in excess of $700,000, and we are paying DIR $10,000 monthly to reduce the debt. The first and second claimants do not have access to the balance of the gross revenue/profits collected by the defendants between 2018 to 2023, estimated in excess of $3m,” he added.

“This was due to the defendants’ mismanagement and misappropriation of our revenue from 2018 to 2023. We need to earn the monies to pay to DIR whilst paying the 14 full-time employees and other operating expenses, including the mounting legal fees in The Bahamas and the United States.

“The second claimant’s income is already less than it has been historically due to the defendants’ ongoing campaign to close our business down… The defendant’s conduct is plainly calculated to achieve indirectly what they have not yet achieved through court orders in this action or any of the defendants’ initiated Bahamian and American actions - putting the claimants out of business, which is amongst the businesses reserved for Bahamians when the defendants are not Bahamians.”

Mr Gibson asserted that the attempts to shut down Conch & Coconut’s website “are worse than an insolvency petition and the effect is more immediate. If the defendants achieve their goal of closing down the website, they would not have to wait for a court order putting [Conch & Coconut] into insolvency since there would effectively be an immediate closure of the business without a live website.

“In this digital age, a business’s website is extremely important to obtaining customers and communicating with current customers, and any threat to take down or suspend the website is an immediate threat to effectively close down the business. We are blessed that we were able to get the second website host service provider, but then the defendants submitted the second infringement complaint and we now must consider a third website host service provider just to stay in business.”

Mr Gibson urged that “the full weight of the law should be brought to bear” against Mr Conde, and added: “We, the claimants, would suffer irreparable harm if the Injunction Order is set aside because the defendants would then be legally free to put the claimants out of business before there is a final judgment in this action.

“If the injunction is maintained and expanded as requested herein, the defendants will not be put out of business because they are not allowed to legally operate or control a business reserved for Bahamians. The defendants claim they operate a booking platform, but this is not true. No booking platform retains the gross income of its service providers and pays the service providers based on the service provider’s expense reports.

“This is what happened between the claimants and the defendants. The DIR fine is against the first and second claimants and not the defendants. so the Government does not recognise the defendants as the owners of a business reserved for Bahamians or as a booking platform associated with the claimants during 2018 to 2023.”

Mr Conde, though, has denied all these claims and has his own contempt of court action against Mr Gibson and Conch & Coconut in the Florida courts.