An artist’s rendering of the proposed Dutch Village project. (File photo)
PHILIPSBURG--The Court of First Instance has ordered former infrastructure minister and Member of Parliament (MP) Theo Heyliger to pay US $92.1 million for sabotaging a large real estate company’s development of a shopping and entertainment centre at the cruise port more than a decade ago.
A judge handed down this sum in a verdict on Tuesday. This ruling has settled the lower court’s handling of the long-running civil lawsuit filed by Zebec Development NV and its owners Luis and Angel Gioia, who have successfully claimed that Heyliger had used his political influence to shut down their “Dutch Village” project after they refused to pay him a portion of their projected rental income as a bribe.
The court had previously found Heyliger liable twice, via interim rulings in October 2023 and May 2025, but had waited on determining the final price tag until Tuesday, when it dismissed Zebec’s claims against co-defendant Ocean Drive Properties NV and its owners Deepak “Danny” Ramchandani and Prem “Peter” Mirpuri.
The Gioia brothers had claimed that Ramchandani and Mirpuri were complicit in the sabotage, and had offered bribes to Heyliger to have Zebec’s project pulled and handed over to their company Ocean Drive.
On Tuesday, the court ruled that Zebec and the Gioias could not substantiate this claim.
Although another company owned by Ramchandani and Mirpuri had allowed one of Heyliger’s companies to take $5,000 per month of their rental income through a suspicious sublease agreement, the judge ruled that this was not enough to prove that Ocean Drive or its owners had actively interfered with Zebec.
It emerged in Tuesday’s verdict that this arrangement between Harbour Arcade NV and Heyliger’s company Frivol had started in 2003 and continued until at least 2014.
Zebec’s case against a fourth co-defendant – St. Maarten Quarter Development Company NV, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. whose approval was required for the Dutch Village project to start – had already been dismissed.
St. Maarten Quarter Development’s liability had been covered by $10 million in compensation it paid to Zebec in 2015, the court ruled.
Heyliger plans to appeal the verdict, a spokesperson told this newspaper on Tuesday night.
“The proceedings have been difficult and discouraging, particularly given the lack of proper legal representation during key parts of the case,” the spokesperson said, a reference to Heyliger’s legal team not providing the court with the names and addresses of witnesses earlier this year. This failure had forced the judge to close this portion of the proceedings, assuming Heyliger had not wanted to contest Zebec’s claim.
“The priority now is to secure effective legal representation and ensure the case receives the fair and thorough review it deserves through the appeal process,” the spokesperson said.
Heyliger is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for accepting bribes and money-laundering. These charges were unrelated to Zebec’s Dutch Village project.
Dutch Village
In 2010, Zebec signed a deal with St. Maarten Harbor Cruise Facilities NV to build the so-called Dutch Village, consisting of 16 retail outlets, on a 13,000-square-metre plot of leased land between the two cruise piers.
The land was transferred in March 2012, but the Gioia brothers claim everything came to a halt shortly after they turned down Heyliger’s request.
Port authorities thwarted Zebec’s efforts to begin construction, Luis Gioia told the court in a previous hearing. He added that Mark Mingo, then-chief executive officer of the St. Maarten Harbour Group of Companies, had sent them a letter in July 2014 that cancelled the project because “it didn’t start on time.”
Zebec’s deal with the port required the formal approval of St. Maarten Quarter Development Company. This ultimately did not come, an act that Zebec’s legal team attributed to Heyliger’s interference.
Ocean Drive replaced Zebec as the facility’s developer in August 2015.
