“It’s shocking that the OBA’s Shadow Minister of Legal Affairs didn’t actually read the bad deal that his party foisted upon the taxpayers of Bermuda. 

Thanks to the OBA passing the bad airport deal, they forced the government into a contractual obligation to make these minimum guarantees. Bermuda,  we've had to pay a total of over $20m into a bank account of a wealthy international company since the onset of the pandemic. That’s $20M that could have been invested in Bermudians. 

This was not an overpayment by the government - it was an overbilling by Skyport. There are no legal means of objecting to overbilling in this bad  OBA contract.  We are obliged to pay their bill because of the deal that the OBA subjected us to.

If we had followed MP Pearman’s advice and refused to pay the bill, Skyport would have had every right to take the Government to court, and they would have won because the bad terms are clear. If we had followed MP Pearman’s advice, we would still have to pay the $4 million and we would be on the hook for penalty fees and legal fees.

This was a bad deal and it’s one that we’re paying for in bad times, and will continue to pay for in both good and bad times for decades to come, because the former Government gave a no-bid privatisation contract to an overseas company that will cost Bermuda’s taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to get out of.”