On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, then Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark raised a mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment deal­ing with the trans­fer or sale of some 450 acres (182.1 hectares) of “prime agri­cul­tur­al land” lo­cat­ed on the Or­ange Grove Es­tate to Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, a com­pa­ny found­ed and owned by Do­minic Hadeed.

The French wine and spir­its gi­ant Pern­od Ri­card was grant­ed a 15-year lease by the Gov­ern­ment for the land on March 1, 1995. That lease had a 15-year re­new­al op­tion when the orig­i­nal lease ex­pired in 2010.

Blue Wa­ters ac­quired Pern­od Ri­card’s lo­cal agri­cul­ture and al­co­hol dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness in 2006, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site. The dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness in­clud­ed brands such as Chivas Re­gal whisky, Stolich­naya vod­ka, Mal­ibu rum and Ja­cob’s Creek and Wyn­d­ham Es­tate wines. Blue Wa­ters lat­er di­vest­ed the al­co­hol dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness to “an­oth­er sub­sidiary busi­ness,” its web­site states.