Turf Club To Auction Businessman’s Property in Effort to Raise Monies Owed to Them via Court Ruling

By Neto Baptiste

The Antigua Turf Club (ATC), has moved to acquire at least one property belonging to Carlton “Tyre Master” Lewis, which it intends to sell via auction in an effort to raise the more than $350,000 owed to the body by the local businessman.

This is according to President of the ATC, Hansen Richards, who said they are preparing the property for sale and will make the relevant information public in due course.

“Tyre Master had refused to pay us the money so we went and got some other stuff done in terms of finding out where he has properties and so forth and we got one of the proprieties for him and the court just finalized the order of sale for us so that is how we are going to recuperate it so we have a property for sale. I am not going to disclose it in terms of where it is and so forth but it is in the amount of half million [dollars] that the property is for and we have the order to sell it,” he said.

In May 2012, Lewis filed for an injunction restraining the ATC from ‘trespassing’ on lands encompassing the Cassada Gardens race track. The businessman claimed to have had a valid lease on the property located just east of the old APUA headquarters.

Lewis lost that case in 2018 but later appealed the decision, which he also lost but have failed to abide by the court’s ruling to compensate the turf club.

Richards said they are awaiting final world from their lawyer while currently working to resolve another legal issue regarding a portion of lands at the facility.   

“We’re just waiting on the lawyer to give us the assurance and the go ahead to put that out there on the market so we can either do it via public auction or private but we are just waiting on him [lawyer]. There is another matter on hand that we have been dealing with which was encroachment on private land on the southern side of the property. We ware encroaching on 4862 square feet of private land so we have an agreement with him to state that the government would exchange piece of the land on the eastern side of him then we wouldn’t have that issue going forward,” he said.

The turf club recently announced a partnership with a UK-based company that has committed to an EC$30 million investment into the Cassada Gardens Racetracks.