The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion last week pulled the plug on a US$1.5 bil­lion de­vel­op­ment in the Turks & Caicos Is­lands, plac­ing a five-star re­sort there in­to re­ceiver­ship be­cause it had failed to meet pay­ments on a loan from the lo­cal fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. The UTC placed the Del­lis Cay de­vel­op­ment in the Turks & Caicos is­lands in­to re­ceiver­ship on Thurs­day, about a week af­ter the de­vel­op­er Turks Ltd, stopped con­struc­tion, ac­cord­ing to a re­port on the Wall Street Jour­nal's Web site yes­ter­day. The ex­clu­sive five-star scheme com­pris­es a 25-room ho­tel, 78 for-sale con­do­mini­ums and 17 vil­las, ser­viced by a Man­darin Ori­en­tal ho­tel as well as restau­rants, golf course, ten­nis courts, spa, bou­tiques, cin­e­ma, busi­ness cen­tre, pools, cig­ar room and li­brary.

A re­port in the Turks & Caicos Week­ly News yes­ter­day, stat­ed that UTC was owed US$$7.1 mil­lion in prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est re­pay­ment on Au­gust 22, but, up to last week, on­ly US$4.1 mil­lion had been paid. The de­vel­op­er ap­pealed for emer­gency fund­ing but the UTC opt­ed in­stead to take over the prop­er­ty by ap­point­ing William Tacon, an ac­coun­tant in the British Vir­gin Is­lands, as the re­ceiv­er. One of the de­vel­op­ers, Dr Cem Ki­nay, was ac­cused of mak­ing a US$500,000 "con­tri­bu­tion" to the for­mer rul­ing par­ty in the Turks & Caicos Is­lands and Ki­nay said last week that con­fi­dence in his com­pa­ny had been "de­stroyed" by neg­a­tive press. The Turks & Caicos news­pa­per said that the de­vel­op­er had waged a cost­ly le­gal bat­tle to have ad­verse ref­er­ences to him­self re­moved from a fi­nal re­port of a Com­mis­sion of In­quiry set up to ex­am­ine al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion.

Ki­nay was quot­ed as say­ing: "We have been strug­gling with very lit­tle cash in hand for the past weeks and have been op­er­at­ing un­der very dif­fi­cult trad­ing con­di­tions. "We asked TTUTC to con­sid­er pro­vid­ing us emer­gency fund­ing and an ex­ten­sion of time of 60 days on the un­paid por­tion of the in­ter­est pay­ment that was due on Au­gust 22, 2009, whilst we make ef­forts to reg­u­larise our fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and pro­vide a cred­i­ble re­struc­tur­ing plan with new eq­ui­ty part­ners, Man­darin Ori­en­tal Group, and the ex­ist­ing pur­chasers. "These re­quests are now re­ject­ed." Re­spond­ing last night, UTC's ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Mar­lon Hold­er said the de­ci­sion to ap­point a re­ceiv­er, for all the com­pa­nies that are in­clud­ed in its se­cu­ri­ty pack­age for a bridg­ing fa­cil­i­ty ex­tend­ed by its mer­chant bank­ing arm, was tak­en to pro­tect its in­ter­est. "The se­cu­ri­ty pack­age in­cludes the lands, build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture which are part of an up­scale re­sort de­vel­op­ment on a pri­vate is­land in the Turks and Caicos aimed at high val­ue in­di­vid­u­als," ex­plained Hold­er.

He said that the UTC was of the view that the val­ue of the project could be "max­imised by at­tract­ing new in­vestors and will seek the co-op­er­a­tion of all the ex­ist­ing in­ter­est­ed par­ties, in­clud­ing the orig­i­nal de­vel­op­ers, to for­mu­late a pack­age that will at­tract new in­vestors and pur­chasers in the de­vel­op­ment. "The UTC wish­es to em­pha­sise that by ap­point­ing a re­ceiv­er it has act­ed in the in­ter­est of the Cor­po­ra­tion and its in­vestors whose in­ter­est it has treat­ed as para­mount for the past 28 years." Del­lis Cay is a 560-acre is­land and its vil­las, man­sions and spa were de­signed by in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned ar­chi­tects in­clud­ing Japan's Shigeru Ban, Lon­don's David Chip­per­field and Mi­lan's Piero Lis­soni. Con­struc­tion start­ed in 2008 with a tar­get­ed com­ple­tion date of late 2010, ac­cord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal. Britain or­dered the sus­pen­sion of the gov­ern­ment and im­posed di­rect rule over the Turks & Caicos in Au­gust af­ter the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry found ev­i­dence of wide­spread cor­rup­tion.