The original developer of the $3.5b Baha Mar resort casino in the Bahamas is trying to publicly shame Chinese bankers into selling him back the project.
Earlier this week, Sarkis Izmirlian (pictured) wrote an open letter to the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM), asking them to sell him the unfinished Baha Mar project while simultaneously calling them liars. Shrewd, that.
Last week, Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie announced that EXIM had sold Baha Mar to Perfect Luck Holdings, a special purpose vehicle set up by EXIM. The presumption is that none of the actual Baha Mar bidders offered to pay the $2.45b EXIM had lent Izmirlian’s Baha Mar Ltd before that company filed for bankruptcy in June 2015, and thus EXIM is simply getting Baha Mar’s red ink off its books until a better offer comes along.
Izmirlian’s letter repeats his earlier claim that his new corporate entity BMD Holdings Ltd had sent EXIM “a bona fide proposal to buy Baha Mar at a price superior to any offer” EXIM had or would receive. Izmirlian claims that it doesn’t make “economic sense” that nobody to date has responded to his offer.
Izmirlian then slams EXIM for concocting “an intricate fabrication” to give the impression that Baha Mar had changed ownership. Izmirlian claims that the EXIM’s lawyers “were able to craft a story sufficiently plausible for the bank to sell Baha Mar to itself and conduct a further sale of Baha Mar in even more secrecy.”
Izmirlian claims that Bahamians, “like us, question the sincerity of the process and the real goal” behind the Perfect Luck subterfuge. Izmirlian closed by urging EXIM’s President Liu Liange to engage in dialogue with him so everyone can “move ahead to a swift and mutually beneficial resolution.”
Liu’s response to Izmirlian’s passive-aggressive missive has so far been deafening in its silence. This week, PM Christie said that if Izmirlian was truly capable of making a “creditable proposal,” then he should make it, implying that Izmirlian’s finances aren’t any better than when the long-delayed Baha Mar’s construction stalled last summer.
