A battle royale has broken out in Tobago over a highly prized, hotly contested, undeveloped 148-acre estate on the leeward side of Tobago, which shelters two beaches and which was recently valued by a Cayman Islands property company, Charterland, as being worth US$17 mill (TT$109 million). The fight for the Culloden Estate includes three European-born residents of Tobago, the Tobago House of Assembly and the state-owned bank, First Citizens. In one corner is Patrick Dankou, who was born in Berlin to a German mother and a Togolese father. Dankou, a resident of Tobago for the last 16 years, bought the Culloden estate in 2000 from the Sobrian family for US$2.2 million through his private company, Nature Resorts Ltd. About half of the money came from silent German investors, Dankou says. He spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on experts to get approvals from the Town and Country Planning Division and the Environmental Management Authority to develop the estate as a five-star hotel project.
The architect, Mark Raymond, did a considerable amount of work on the project. In an interview with the Business Guardian in Tobago on Sunday, Dankou said that he was approached by Chris James, a British-born, long-time resident of Tobago, in 2007. James, who owns several tourism properties on the island, told him that he had lined up some foreign investors who were anxious to invest in developing the Culloden estate into a five-star, eco-resort. In March 2008, Dankou agreed to sell 75 per cent of Nature Resorts Lts to Christopher James and his business partner, Simon Paler, for US$2.75 million. Dankou says that part of the agreement was that he would receive certain perks in the arrangement such as an agreement that the purchasers would pay for his commercial pilot's licence and that Dankou's company Yes Tourism Ltd would be given the concessions for the tour desk at the hotel, the car rental arrangements and the five-star PADI dive centre.
Court documents indicate that James and Paler borrowed approximately US$2.3 million from First Citizens in order to pay for the majority stake in Nature Resorts, which would have given them control of the prized 148-acre estate. While monies from the First Citizens loan were used to pay US$1.3 million to Dankou's German partners, Dankou himself only received a Promissory Note for the sum of US$975,000. He says that the promissory note has not been honoured by the purchasers of the land. In a brief interview on Friday, James declined to respond directly to charges levelled by Dankou, referring all queries to his attorney. But he spoke generally about the fact that land licence regime that the Tobago House of Assembly had introduced in February 2007 had soured foreign investor interest in Tobago. The loan to James and Paler was secured by a mortgage on the Culloden Estate.
First Citizens is claiming that the investors defaulted on the loan on or before October 31, 2010 and the bank is now claiming US$2.6 million from them. First Citizens has been trying to sell the estate since March this year and news reports out of Tobago indicate that the THA is anxious to purchase the property for $19 million. On Friday, Dankou approached the High Court in Tobago seeking to prevent First Citizens from selling the land. Dankou is also insisting that the Promissory Note for US$975,000 at six per cent interest be honoured. The Business Guardian understands that both the British High Commission and the German embassy have taken a keen interest in the matter.
