The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

CONVICTED Bahamian drug trafficker Jonathan Eric Gardiner is seeking more time to challenge the federal case against him in New York, with his attorney telling a judge that she needs additional time to review the record because Gardiner was arrested long after his co-defendants.

The request comes just over a month after Gardiner was hit with a separate federal indictment in Georgia accusing him of supplying massive quantities of cocaine from The Bahamas to drug trafficking organisations in the United States.

In a September 11 filing in the Southern District of New York, Gardiner’s attorney, Susy Ribero-Ayala, asked US District Judge Gregory Woods for an extension of the deadline to file pretrial motions.

Ms Ribero-Ayala said Gardiner was arrested on May 12, while co-defendants in the case were arrested in 2024 and 2025. Because she entered the case later, she said no previous scheduling order governing pretrial motions had applied to him.

She said she needed additional time to determine whether any pretrial motions should be filed and, if so, to prepare them. The government has consented to the request. If Judge Woods grants the application, a status conference scheduled for September 23 would no longer be necessary, and Gardiner’s pretrial motions would instead be due on October 12.

The filing is the latest development in a case that has drawn intense scrutiny in The Bahamas since Gardiner, known as “Player”, was arrested after surviving an Election Day plane crash off Florida in May.

The latest major development previously reported by The Tribune came in August, when Gardiner was indicted in a separate Georgia federal case over an alleged cocaine trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors say operated from December 2022 to May 2026.

US authorities allege Gardiner, operating from The Bahamas, could supply more than 2,000 kilograms of cocaine at a time to trafficking organisations. Prosecutors said the cocaine was moved into metropolitan Atlanta before being distributed to several other states.

He faces charges in Georgia of conspiracy to import a controlled substance into the United States and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

That case is separate from the New York prosecution in which Gardiner pleaded not guilty in June to cocaine importation conspiracy and firearms-related charges. He has remained detained after a judge rejected an attempt to secure his release, finding that he posed a substantial danger to the community and that the evidence against him was strong.

Gardiner’s arrest followed an extraordinary chain of events on May 12, when a private aircraft carrying him and ten other people crashed in the Atlantic during a flight from Abaco to Grand Bahama. All aboard survived and were rescued by the US Coast Guard.

US authorities said Gardiner was carrying $30,000 in Bahamian currency when he was rescued. His attorneys later produced a bank slip which they said showed that $20,000 had been withdrawn from an account belonging to Top Notch Builders, the company Gardiner described in court filings as his business.

The company has been linked to major government construction projects in The Bahamas, including the Eight Mile Rock administrative complex and the Carmichael Village affordable housing development. Gardiner previously served a lengthy federal prison sentence in the United States after being convicted of cocaine importation offences nearly two decades ago.