A key figure in the failed shrimp farm project at Victoria, St. Mark has died.
THE NEW TODAY was informed by family members that U.S-born citizen, Leo Ford died Friday in his adopted homeland Panama after a brief illness which left him hospitalised.
Ford was one of the persons featured in the recent Al Jazeera documentary on the sale of diplomatic passports involving the governments of Grenada and Dominica.
The American was recruited by the developer of the Shrimp farm project, Soren Dawody to establish the farm.
In a recent interview with this newspaper, Ford said that he could have gotten the shrimp farm up and running in St. Mark at a cost of US$3 million.
Dawody reportedly sold EC$52.2 million worth in Grenadian passports for the project which government said would have provided over 400 jobs to residents in Grenada’s poorest parish.
The Keith Mitchell-led government has promised to conduct an investigation to find out where is the missing money since the project never materialised.
Before his death, Ford had also told this newspaper that two government members in the current administration had approached him for EC$1 million and US$200, 000.00 respectively to help finance their campaigns in the 2018 general election.
According to Ford, he informed the Government member who was named, that as an American citizen he would have had to make a declaration to the relevant authority in the United States since such a financial transaction could put him into a lot of trouble.
Ford also said that the ground-breaking ceremony that took place in Victoria for the Shrimp farm was hurriedly put together to help the cause of the ruling New National Party (NNP) for the March 13, 2018 national poll.
The U.S Citizen also alleged in the Al Jazeera documentary that Prime Minister Mitchell had indicated to him at the ground-breaking ceremony that money was needed for the election and that he should talk to certain persons.
Ford is known to have had in his possession a number of key documents involving the movement of money from Russians who purchased Grenadian passports to help raise the funds for the shrimp farm project.
