A former director of the unfinished $3.5b Baha Mar resort casino in the Bahamas says the project’s would-be buyer should be rejected due to its alleged ties to Asian crime groups.

In August, Baha Mar’s principal creditor, the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM), sold the project to a wholly owned shell company (Perfect Luck Holdings) in August with the expectation that Baha Mar would eventually be sold to an independent Chinese company. Late last week, word broke that Chinese conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE) had been identified as the prospective ultimate purchaser of the Baha Mar project.

On Sunday, Dionisio D’Aguilar, a former director of the resort’s original developer Baha Mar Ltd, issued a statement claiming that CTFE is “unsuited to invest in the Bahamas.” D’Aguilar said he based this assessment on CTFE’s owners – the family of the late Cheng Yu Tung – having a “well-documented connection to organized crime in Asia.”

CTFE’s holdings include a 10% stake in the parent company of Macau casino operator SJM Holdings. The Cheng family also owns Macau’s largest junket operator Suncity Group, with which CTFE has partnered on a prospective Vietnam resort casino project.