Baha Mar Developer Switched by Chinese Lender

The Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) shut out Baha Mar, a problematic resort casino yet to be opened in the Bahamas, this Friday. This step may mean an end to the attachment of Sarkis Izmirlian, the developer.

The state-run bank, which has been financier to Baha Mar and invested around 2.45 billion US dollars, allegedly turned apprehensive about the provisional liquidators appointed by the Court falling short of honoring their mandate to ‘preserve and maintain’ the project’s remaining funds. It is supposed to have insisted on the decision to dismiss 2000 of the resort staff last month, as the project went inactive. EXIM succeeded in persuading the Bahamas Supreme Court to handover the unfinished 3.5 billion dollar project to Deloitte & Touche.

This transfer of duties barred any further involvement from Baha Mar Ltd, which invested roughly 850 million dollars in the project. Izmirlian’s fight with EXIM, the Bahamian government and China Construction America (CCA, the project’s chief contractor) for the past one year seems in vain now. In his statement, Izmirlian named the receivership as an extension of “the unfortunate pattern of disastrous actions taken by other stakeholders” from the time of Baha Mar’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing this summer. EXIM and CCA were more focused on legal and political maneuvers than solutions, according to Izmirlian, and these plots of them were posing a bar to Baha Mar’s possibility of success.

On the other hand, according to a close source of EXIM, the bank was in fact planning to finish the building and open it, but did not want to allocate the necessary 600 million dollars with Izmirlian as the in-charge of the project. They allegedly neither made a counter-offer nor even replied to Izmirlian when he proposed for interim funding last month.

According to the Wall Street Journal, upon completion, the resort will have 2200 rooms in four hotels, including the Hyatt, Rosewood and SLS Lux brands. The currently paused work is reported to be 97% finished, which began back in 2011.