Receivers

Can the Receiver at Flag Luxury Resort find a new buyer?  The answer is yes, he can find a new buyer.  But, there is not a damn thing he can do with the buyer, except tell him to go and talk to Robert FX Sillerman, the owner of Flag Luxury Resort. 

I do not know if you heard JB Turbidy being interviewed by Iwande on Upbeat Radio on the morning news about ten days ago.  What Turbidy said concerned me.  He repeatedly assured Iwande that the Salamander Group of investors was looking forward to the appointment of the Receiver at Flag Luxury Resort by Credit Suisse because that would enable the project to be sold to a new investor such as the Salamander Group.  He seemed convinced that the Receiver had the power to sell Flag to his group. That is so wrong, that I wondered if he had any advice before he spoke.   

Turbidy is not the only one mistaken.  The various newspapers carrying articles on the topic continue to repeat that Credit Suisse has “assumed ownership” of Flag.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Anguilla has had since 1974 a pure system of registered land titles.  It is called the Torrens system after its Australian inventor Robert Torrens.  This system exists in several parts of Canada, the Commonwealth, and the United States, as well as in Anguilla.  It is a system whereby all deeds, and all common law concepts of land titles and interests in land, are abolished and replaced by a Register kept by government.  This Register is the only evidence of title to land in Anguilla. 

One of the reforms of the Registered Land Act of Anguilla was the abolition of mortgages, and the traditional rights of a mortgagee.  A lender secures a loan by registering “a charge” over real property.  When a secured loan goes into default, the creditor has only two remedies under our Act. They are, briefly, either (1) to appoint a Receiver of the charged property; or (2) to exercise the power of sale by public auction.  If a loan is in default, the secured creditor must give a 3-months notice either (1) to appoint a Receiver, or (2) that the property will be sold.  He cannot do both in the same notice.  Let us look at these two remedies.

First, what does it mean to appoint a Receiver of land in Anguilla?  The rights and powers of the Receiver are set out in the Act.  These rights and powers may not be expanded by contract beyond those given in the Act.  A lender cannot make a borrower sign a debenture increasing the rights and powers of the lender beyond those given by the Act.  To permit otherwise would be to corrupt and distort the remedies given in the Act.  Every lender would inevitably oblige every borrower to vary the limited rights of the lender to give the lender the widest possible rights.  The law does not permit that. 

If a loan goes into default, the Chargee may give the defaulting borrower a notice to the effect that unless the loan is brought current within 90 days the Chargee intends to appoint a Receiver.  The law enables the Receiver only to go into possession of the property and to manage it.  The Receiver runs it for the benefit, essentially, of the creditor until the loan has been paid off.  On the satisfaction of the debt, the Receiver is obliged to hand the property back to the owner.  His rights and powers are limited to managing the property in order to ensure the income goes to satisfying the debt.  Under no circumstances can he sell it to another investor, regardless of what the loan documents say.  He can sell nothing except in the ordinary course of business, eg, the sale of food in a restaurant.

A secured creditor has one alternative remedy under the Act.  That is the right of sale by public auction.  He no longer has the traditional remedies of a mortgagee under the common law.  The holder of a mortgage under the old law used to have the “right of forclosure”.  Forclosure gave the mortgagee title to the property, subject only to the right of the borrower to pay off the loan and get title back.  The holder of a mortgage used to have the right to go into possession of the property and to sell it to satisfy the debt.  He could sell by any means, once he tried his best to get the full market value.  That power of sale included the right to sell by private treaty.  That remedy has been abolished. 

The rights and powers of the lender who holds a mortgage charge are set out in the Act.  These rights and powers may not be varied except to the limited extent permitted by the Act.  The right of sale is, essentially, to appoint an auctioneer to sell the property by public auction.  No private sale is permitted.  The remedy of sale is given only to the holder of a charge exercising the right of sale as a chargee.  That right does not extend to a Receiver, who has no power of sale.  A sale by Chargee has the advantage that it wipes from the title all remaining charges and liens.  The purchaser from a Chargee obtains a free and clear title to the property.

In the event that a Chargee gives a notice to appoint a Receiver, the Chargee must appoint the Receiver with the limited powers of a Receiver, ie, to manage for the benefit of the lender.  A Chargee may not appoint a Receiver and simultaneously exercise the right of sale by public auction.  If the lender/chargee wishes to change his mind and sell, he must give the defaulting borrower a second notice to that effect, with another 3-month grace period.  The creditor has to give 3 months in either case.  So that, if there is no revenue to make the appointment of the Receiver worthwhile, and the creditor decides to exercise the right of sale, he must give another 3-months grace period to that effect.  

Given that Flag Luxury has no significant income that I am aware of, I cannot imagine why Credit Suisse would have wanted to appoint a Receiver.  There would be no income for the Receiver to deal with in satisfying the debt owed to the lender.

In the unlikely event that the Receiver did find a buyer, and persuaded the defaulting debtor to sell to this buyer, such a sale would be a disaster.  It would essentially be a sale by owner.  Such a sale would leave the property bound by all the existing obligations registered against title.  A sale by the chargee/lender is much more advantageous.  Sale by the Chargee would wipe the existing obligations from the title.  A purchaser would obtain a clean title from the Chargee.  That advantage is lost if the Chargee permits or pressures the borrower to sell to a new purchaser.  The new purchaser would take title encumbered with all the other debts and charges.  No properly advised potential investor in these circumstances would buy from the Receiver or owner.  He would insist on buying only from an auctioneer, or from the government after compulsory acquisition.

          Is there something in all this that is a matter of public record and that I am missing?

         Just remember that Don Mitchell is a dead-out, retired, ex-lawyer, and nobody can safely rely on anything he says about the law.

Probates

Probates.  Last Tuesday, the Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic had the privilege of having two experienced lawyers speak about problems that arise in Anguilla over the administration of estates.   One of them was Ms Jean Dyer.  She spoke from the point of view of a private legal practitioner.  She explained that attorneys can assist families in two ways.  Where the estate is small and simple, it may be necessary to seek legal assistance only with preparing the forms leading up to the application to the court for a Grant of Probate or of Letters of Administration.  Where the estate is more complicated, it might be advisable to seek advice on the administration of the estate. 

Ms Dyer explained the process and typical problems that arise both with Letters of Administration and with Probates.  She spoke about the particular issue of family land, where the deceased died before 11 December 1945, without a Will.  Administrators who are not properly legally advised may believe that they can simply divide the land up among the children in equal shares.  That may be true for estates that arose after December 1945.  But, it is not true for estates that arose prior to that date.  Depending on the date of the death of the deceased, there will be different persons who became the heirs of the deceased. 

Ms Dyer explained that the Personal Representative who is not legally represented risks dividing up the estate in a way that is not according to law.  Problems arise when the Personal Representative does not account to the heirs.  Sometimes, Personal Representatives pay themselves out of the estate for their work.  Sometimes, they administer the estate in secret, without sharing information with the heirs.  They do not always understand the importance of putting family arrangements in writing.  That is where the assistance of an attorney can be invaluable.  There is some cost up front, but it saves the estate and the Administrator from major expenses later on.

The forum, which ended at 9:00pm, was part of an ongoing series of Tuesday evening public forums being held throughout the month of November in commemoration of the third anniversary of the Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic. 

The topic for discussion next Tuesday 17 November is Proposals to Reform Family Law in Anguilla.  The presenters will be Ms Kiesha Gumbs, Social Development Planner, and Ms Navine Kissob, attorney at law.  All interested members of the public are invited to attend and to participate.

The Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic is a free service provided by the Department of Social Administration.  The clinic is held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Interested persons may telephone 497 2317 to make an appointment.

Surveys

More on the forum last Tuesday.  Last Tuesday, I took the opportunity to bring up for discussion a common problem attended to at the Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic:  Surveying methods in Anguilla.  I explained that one of the most common complaints in the Legal Aid Clinic had already been mentioned by Dame Bernice.  That was the practice of the Planning Department, with the compliance of the surveyors, to insert provision for a public road into every subdivision.  This was done without informing the landowner of his rights, or the implications of what was being done.  The public road reserve was often inserted into the survey without the road connecting to an existing road at either end.  The road provision was stuck in with no justification or rationale, merely in the hope that one day it might be extended over the adjoining parcels.  No compensation was offered or even discussed.  This amounted to a fraud, in my opinion, on families that were subdividing inherited land.

I told the audience that a second problem that arose in the Anguilla Legal Aid Clinic also involved surveys.  I explained that in most West Indian islands, there were rules that required surveyors to notify neighbours whenever a new boundary was going to be put down.  Surveyors should be required to get the consent of all affected landowners before the Chief Surveyor permitted any survey to be registered.  It appeared that the contrary was done in Anguilla.  Surveyors here are not guided by any written standards.  Here, surveyors are encouraged not to speak to neighbouring landowners, but to present a fait accompli in the hope that any dissatisfaction would be mute and helpless. 

There had also been complaints that the Planning Department sometimes required a road provision to be made alongside a boundary without any discussion with the neighbouring landowner who might have been willing to contribute one half of the road provision.  The result was that persons who were desperate to have their land sub-divided were being compelled to provide a road for all the neighbours without the neighbours contributing.

A lively discussion followed the two presentations.

Amazing!

It is amazing what you can meet when you go walking in Anguilla. I have been away in St Kitts for a few days. Today I resumed my walking regime and went to explore the Brimegin area. I came upon what appeared to be an abandoned hotel project. I never knew there was such a project on that coast. There was no “No Trespassing” sign. The entrance was open. Each room was open to the elements. No doors or windows were installed. There was not a speck of building materials left on the site. It was so clean, you could eat off it (if you ignored the goat droppings in the pool area). There was no sign indicating who the owners were. There was no sign indicating who the architects or contractors were.

The project as seen from Albert Lake's quarry

I wondered who started building it.

The back entrance?

I wondered why it stopped. Did the money run out? Or, had there been a health issue?

Approaching up the rear entrance

What dashed hopes and plans does this abandoned property represent?

The rear of the back row of buildings

Is it going to be restarted, or is it closed down for good, eventually to go back to bush?

The front row of buildings from the rear

Did the contractors and local suppliers get paid?

The pool, bar and restaurant from the front

Was there a Memorandum of Agreement with government relating to this project too? And, was it honoured, by both parties?

The pool deck and the buildings beyond

Or, is it locally owned, and there was nothing for government to give away?

From the windows to the pool deck looking back to the rear row of buildings

Was there an Aliens Landholding Licence that government ministers could give away so that no fees or taxes need be paid to the people of Anguilla for the next 125 years?

The rear view of the front row of buildings

Or, did it stop because the owners want to have a Cap Juluca type MoA too, and government was not sufficiently accommodating?

The front view of the back row of buildings

The buildings just sit there, enigmatic, clueless, but not giving away any information either.

Rock fill at the entrance

What an amazing amount of rock used in this construction! The most expensive finishing touches are yet to be done: The wiring, the plumbing, the furnishing and equipping.

Datura bush

Leaving the site, I noticed the largest datura bush I have seen in a while. I wonder how many Anguillians know about the ritual use of the crushed seed. Thugeeism, after all, is not a common topic of conversation in the West Indies. How many of us would be aware of the use of its psychotropic qualities in drugging the sacrificial victims murdered in honour of the goddess Kali, the goddess of death and destruction?

Flag Revival

The villa owners are taking over? Word is that some of the villa owners at Flag are not waiting on the outcome of their law suits. Nor are they are waiting on the outcome of the negotiations between government and the lenders. Far less are they waiting for the outcome of the recent negotiations between Guish and George and the local government. The word is that they realise that if they do not immediately go into possession of their $12 million villas and stake out their claim, they will be in the equivalent of the Oklahoma land rush. So, they have hired Tony and company to finish off their villas. Then, they are going into possession and declaring they are in their residences. Their stance is, ‘Let us now see who can claim better possessory title after that!’ They expect to be in possession of seven of the villas completed and occupied by December of this year.

Meanwhile, Guish and George have returned to Anguilla. Are they really back from exile in St Kitts? They claim they are taking over Temenos. I do not know what happened to their big plans in St Kitts. Are they trying to keep a foot in both islands? Or, are they finished with St Kitts? Do you know?

I am told that they want to take over the golf course, the restaurant and ‘some of the villas’. Or, is it that they just want to help ‘finish’ some of the villas? The message is confused. They are said to be backed by one JB of Antil. Who he is, is not entirely clear. Is this just another stop-gap con-job? Or, is it something of substance? Only time will tell.

And, what is in it for the owners of Cap Juluca? Why should Aaron have agreed to take on the $200 thousand per month bill of keeping the golf course watered? There is no advantage for him and his investors that I can see.

Can you?

Pyramids

Anguilla’s own pyramids of the sun and the moon. I hate to be writing this. It might appear that I am delighting in the misfortune that has overwhelmed Robert FX Sillerman. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sillerman’s dream playground of a Greg Norman golf course and luxury hotel project in Anguilla has turned to ashes. The bankers have run out of money. Credit Suisse has too much money loaned to golf course projects. They appear to have said they will not put one more dollar into Flag. The project has closed down. It now lies abandoned. The hotel buildings and the villas are incomplete. Exposed to the elements, they are beginning to deteriorate.

Watering of the golf course first stopped in January. It restarted in March for a few weeks. It has now been stopped for the past two months. This is the dry season. No rain is falling. The grass on the golf course is dying for lack of water.

The tragedy of our abandoned golf course and hotel project reminds me now of nothing more than the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon at Teotihuacan. Any one who has ever visited Mexico City and who has not taken the tour of the pyramids has missed an experience that sears itself into the memory. I will never forget the feeling of exaltation I experienced as I first set eyes on those magnificent structures. The view from the tops of the two major pyramids is stunning. You are left in awe at the sheer extravagance and waste as you contemplate the amount of labour and treasure that must have gone into the construction.

Just a week ago, I was reading an article in the New York Times about a certain Bobby Ginn. His 1,900-acre project, called Bella Collina, was designed to hold 800 homes and a golf course. Today, only 48 houses dot the landscape, and just three are occupied. It is a ghost town. So is Tesoro. This is another golf resort opened by Mr Ginn near Port St Lucie. There just 150 houses sit on 900 waiting lots. A third project of his is the Conservatory in Palm Cost. It is even more barren. Only 5 of a total of 340 lots have been constructed. The banks are foreclosing. His properties are being sold off. Most of his projects were funded with loans organized by the same Credit Suisse.

Someone has now sent me the following photographs of the abandoned hotel and golf course at Flag in Anguilla. The resemblance to Teotihuacan is uncanny. Will the ruins last as long?

The fairways turning brown

The ponds drying up

Weeds growing in the sand traps

The greens turning brown

A small spot of green around one of the sprinklers

The river has run dry

Soon the forest will have reclaimed the ruins

Anguilla's very own pyramids?

These villas look almost complete

These villas look like they have a long way to go

The sense of desolation and abandonment is overwhelming

Even the heavy equipment appears to have bush growing up around it

Sillerman meant well for Anguilla. His vision, and the investment he made to back it up, helped pull Anguilla out of the barren years of the Hubert Hughes Administration. Does no one remember what it was like to be in business or to be looking for a job in Anguilla in the late 1980s?

If Sillerman’s money had been better managed by those in whose hands he placed it, no one would be pointing fingers at him now. He was badly served by his managers and his employees. He is taking the blame for everything. Even for not repatriating the Chinese. They worked for Ashtrom, not Sillerman. When Ashtrom posted cash deposits to guarantee their air fares, government spent it on foolishness. Now, when they are not fighting among themselves in their squalid quarters, the Chinese compete with Anguillians for scarce construction work.

So far, it is reported that US$750 million, three quarters of a billion dollars, has been invested in this project. Credit Suisse has refused to inject the remaining $200 million needed to complete the project. They say they have been burned by these expensive golf course projects. I am not surprised. Sillerman is blamed for not coming up with the money personally. Now, that is unfair.

Other than being too trusting, and not knowing how history has treated wealthy trusting investors in Anguilla, I do not know of anything that Sillerman has done wrong.

The real victims of this fiasco are Sillerman and the people of Anguilla. We are both the victims of fraud and mismanagement.

Related posts:

18 January 2009: Not Happening

Flag Golf

Watering resumes at Flag Golf Course. We in Anguilla have been worrying ourselves sick about what is going to happen with the abandoned golf course at Flag. We are now in the middle of the dry season. The rains stopped in January. The public utility company, Anglec, cut off electricity about that time. The desalinization plant ceased operations. The grass on the golf course has not been watered since then. Needless to say, the grass has been turning brown. The following photographs taken a couple of days ago illustrate the extent of the problem at this present time.

Note the exceptionally low water level in the ponds. Is that grass I see growing in the sand traps? Note also the colour of the grass on the fairway.

I gather from the Chief Minister’s Tuesday morning press conference that he has managed to persuade Anglec to turn back on the electricity to Flag, even though Anglec has not been paid for several months of consumption. He asserts that the water has begun again to flow at the golf course. I assume this to mean that the desalinization plant has been turned back on once again. Does that mean the golf course workers, or some of them, are being paid once again to operate the system?

I only hope the grass is not completely dead.

Expect more

Heartbreak Hotel. So, we hear that Sterling Hotels is going to buy the resort. Sterling is run by a friend of Sillerman, and Sillerman has shares in the company. Sterling is international, "affordable," and has no properties in the Caribbean. Madonna sang about it, "Like a virgin, touched for the very first time."

But, Sterling, we hear, does not want the golf course. They only want Sillerman’s Heartbreak Hotel and associated structures. So, the AXA government is in the process of buying or leasing the right to operate the golf course and its associated club house and restaurant. The running cost of the golf course alone is US$6,000.00 per day. They have worked out that in order to cover annual running costs of the course alone there would need to be a minimum of 30 golfers per day, every day, every year, each paying $200.00. There is some question of who will manage the course and how, since the club house belongs to Flag, the golf carts were never paid for, and the golf cart company is reclaiming them, the ancillary costs will be met. None of this calculation even begins to factor in the cost of buying or leasing the golf course from Flag. That figure is not even being talked about.

My take on it is that US$6,000.00 a day is nothing. That's only $180,000.00 a month. Or, $2,160,000.00 per year. Perhaps, if we closed down one or two of the primary schools, there would be enough savings to cover the total cost?

And, we might even be able to almost break even on the golf course. Let people use it for $200.00 and, if it does well in the winter, the revenue will just pour in. An average of 7.5 foursomes per day should bring that amount in. That is 30 paying golfers per day, every day, all year long. Perhaps, all members of the Anguilla Golf Association will be obliged to play once per week. Perhaps, the hotels will oblige by advertising themselves as exclusively golfing resorts. We might even pressure them into taking shares. It all appears quite feasible?

The ancillary benefits for the hotels, restaurants, the Sunshine Shack, and the entire tourism sector, would be very big. The benefits of putting construction workers back to work would be enormous. Or, will they all be Chinee?

But, they better get out there and figure out the advanced watering system TODAY before the grass dies!

This would be an election winner for the United Front, if they can pull it off!

Not Happening

Who is Robert FX Sillerman? He is very big stuff, a media and entertainment billionaire in the USA. For years, he dealt in millions of dollars like you and I deal in tens and hundreds. Through his company, CKX Inc, he was acquiring the majority rights to Graceland, the Elvis Presley Estate, as well as the assets of Simon Fuller’s “American Idol”, part of the Idol franchise which airs in more than 100 countries. In 1990, when Sillerman and his wife celebrated their 25^th anniversary, he presented her with US$100 million to launch her charity, the Tomorrow Foundation. Additionally, for what it’s worth, he owns the rights to the name, image and likeness of Muhammad Ali.

Robert FX Sillerman

And so we come to Anguilla, and Sillerman’s flagship Flag Luxury Properties, and its associated Temenos Golf Club. This has been advertised to consist of a 114-room hotel with an 18,000 sq ft spa and fitness centre, 50 oceanfront residences, 18 “estate homes”, 10 villas, 38 spa villas, and a Greg Norman-designed golf course.

Greg Norman at the 2003 groundbreaking ceremony

The hotel was originally projected in 2003 to be coming on stream in 2006.

Local dignitaries at the 2003 groundbreaking

In the event, the golf course and club house were both ready by 2006. But, not any part of the hotel or villas.

Club house and golf course at its 2006 opening

We in Anguilla have been holding our breaths since St Regis dropped out of the picture and was replaced in January 2008 by Baccarat Hotels and Residences. We wondered about those villa purchasers who had invested mainly on the promise that St Regis was to manage the Temenos property. What would they think, and, more importantly, what would they do?

Late last year, even before the markets crashed and the world economies began to be exposed to fears of recession and depression, catastrophe struck. In August, we learned that the entire project was suspended indefinitely. All the hoopla about the resort being branded as a Baccarat Hotel has fallen through. I have my doubts that Baccarat is any longer associated with the closed hotel project. Once the announcement was made of Baccarat’s involvement, a website had immediately gone up. Over last summer, the website went completely inactive. Now the Baccarat hotels website does not even link to or mention anything about Baccarat Anguilla. Nor does the Temenos Anguilla website have any mention of the Baccarat hotel. All references to it have been removed.

Feverish moves during the last half of 2008 to obtain the necessary further financing to complete the project do not appear to have resulted in any real progress. And, now the world economies are sliding into a depression that is estimated by many commentators to be likely to last for at least the next year, perhaps two or three years. Meetings between the principals of Temenos and the government of Anguilla as recently as this month have not produced any news of new funding coming on stream to permit the project to pick up steam again. The construction company, Ashtrom, have departed, and the imported Chinese workers packed and housed 20 to a container are slowly trickling back to Beijing.

Meanwhile, in December 2008, the Hon Victor Banks presented a budget for Anguilla for the year 2009 of EC$339 million. This record amount was intended to meet the growing cost of Anguilla’s public services and capital programme for the coming year. As Mr Banks explained, his budgeted increase in revenue of $4 million over the 2008 figure was mainly expected from stamp duties resulting from alien landholding licences to purchasers of real estate when the Viceroy/Mubadala project opens for operations in 2009. Flag Luxury Properties was conspicuous by its absence from mention in the budget.

So, I wondered, what has really happened to block Flag Luxury Properties out of the Minister of Finance’s Anguilla budget calculations? Where is Mr Sillerman and his billions of US dollars in all of this? I did a Google search for Robert FX Sillerman. Fortunately for us, when you are a public company or a public figure in the United States, most of the information on you is published on the internet. This information is required by law to be public information. Go ahead, you can do it too! This is what is out there:

Credit Suisse was the last lender to the project that I could find. They put in a reported US$180 million in March 2006. Sillerman reportedly came up with additional financing for the project at the same time. The project was originally estimated to cost some US$200 million. So far, a reputed US$500 million has been invested.

Flag Luxury is owned by a company called FX Luxury. Flag Luxury, FX Luxury and FX Real Estate are so intertwined that I have been unable, even after multiple readings of this website, to untangle the relationships. Perhaps you can do better.

From yet another site, we learn who the directors of FX Real Estate are. They are, principally, Robert FX Sillerman as Chairman and CEO, Paul C Kavanos as President, and Barry A Shier as Chief Operating Officer. Sillerman is the founder of SFX Entertainment from which he made most of his money, upto and including its sale to Clear Channel Communications in August 2000. Kavanos is the founder of Flag, and previously developed Ritz-Carltons in the USA. Shier is an old pro in the gambling and hotel industries, having served in various capacities for Mirage Resorts and Golden Nugget of Las Vegas.

More searching of the internet reveals that FX Real Estate is not doing well. In the past year alone, its shares have dropped in value from US$8.00 to 10c.

FX Real Estate

An SEC filing of 5 November 2008 tells us that FX Real Estate appears to have lost its option to acquire the Elvis Presley Estate.

Subsequently, a December 2008 release informs us that FX Real Estate has defaulted on a US$475 million loan from Credit Suisse. As a result, the company appears to be at risk of losing its Las Vegas properties. It seems to me that these business reverses must negatively impact Mr Sillerman's ability to find the further resources needed to revive the Flag project in Anguilla.

Various government press conferences and speeches in the House of Assembly in November and December of last year indicate that some five to six million US dollars are owing to local creditors alone. Chinese workers abandoned by their employer on the island claimed they had not been paid for several months before they were picked up and deported. Word is that they were sent home, at government expense, after some of them began to threaten that they would complain to the nearest Chinese Embassy. The Blanchard-operated Zurra Restaurant is closed. All its signage has been taken down. Ashtrom, the general contractors for the project, have packed up their bags and left the island. The golf course was closed down, though the maintenance crew was kept on with the slimmest of budgets.

All in all, it is not surprising that the Hon Minister of Finance has ceased to factor into his projections for income in 2009 the Flag Luxury Properties hotel development project at Cove Bay. The Flag project is not likely to be completed anytime soon.

The likelihood is that Sillerman & Co have much more important business to attend to than little old Anguilla and its over-ambitious golf course. Unless, cynical and unworthy thought though it is, he was banking on buying out the Credit Suisse debt and his partners' equity on the cheap? Little hope of that. The law suits alone will likely take years to settle.

Now, the word on the street is that the remaining golf course workers have not been paid for weeks, and are very upset and worried about their future. Who can blame them?

So, who is thinking of playing golf now?