Former BPL Chairman Details “Power Struggle”

NASSAU, BAHAMAS – Meantime, a Friday court filing revealing in detail the events leading up to former BPL Chairperson Darnell Osborne’s dismissal from the company.

In her wrongful dismissal lawsuit, former Chairman of the Board of Directors at Bahamas Power and Light Darnell Osborne outlined a power struggle between board members and company directors in 2018.

In her witness statement, Osborne says she was in the post around 10 months when her relationship with then Works Minister Desmond Bannister began to change.

She says Banister started to question her about issues surrounding carving out an area of a shell power purchase agreement.

Another issue was whether BPL CEO Whitney Heastie had the authority to hire and fire BPL executives without board approval- a topic that came up at a meeting on May 18th 2018.

Osborne stated: “In this meeting, I, along with other board members, disagreed with Mr. Heastie and maintained that this statutory power was held by the directors of the board.”

 However, Heastie and Bannister saw things differently.

Osborne said she requested a legal opinion, which Bannister criticized as a waste of money. 

 She said, “In response, Minister Bannister threatened to demand my resignation or terminate me if I did not change my position. On Friday, August 3, 2018, Minister Bannister summoned me to his office and criticized my leadership style.”

Osborne says her reputation suffered after Bannister claimed that she constantly petitioned him for a $300k per year salary.

Another misleading statement that she tried to get retracted was an allegation by Bannister that Osborne was sending hundreds of dollars in make-up bills to BPL, when the bill was for 30-40 employees, was for BPL’s purpose and was a one-off.

Osborne said that, as a result of the comments by the then-minister, she, as a certified public accountant, is subject to the threat of investigations by both local and international professional accounting bodies of which she is a member, and is subject to further embarrassment due to her previous positions as president and Chairman of the Ethics and Investigation Committee of Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA).

She says, “I am unable to obtain any suitable employment given the fact that these allegations continue to hang over my head in the public arena.”