Bellas Gate | An Investigative Report

The story nobody told you about copper, gold, and the man who controls 37% of Jamaica’s mineral rights.

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Part I: The Drills Are Turning

Right now, twenty kilometres north of Old Harbour, in the hills around Bellas Gate, St. Catherine — drills are turning. Not for bauxite. Not for limestone. For copper. And gold.

A Canadian company called C3 Metals is running a diamond drilling programme across thirteen thousand hectares of Jamaican land. One of the biggest copper and gold producers on Earth — Freeport-McMoRan, an American company worth over sixty billion US dollars — just committed seventy-five million dollars to the project.

Seventy-five million. US. And most Jamaicans have never heard of it.

But here’s the part that should concern you. It’s not just that this is happening — it’s how it got here. The story of Bellas Gate didn’t start with C3 Metals. And it didn’t start with Freeport. It started with licences. And the man who collected them.

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Part II: The Licence Collector

His name is Robert Stewart. Most people know him as Bobby. He is the eldest son of the late Gordon “Butch” Stewart — the man who built Sandals Resorts, who founded the Jamaica Observer newspaper, who built the ATL Group that sells you your cars, your appliances, and your Starbucks.

Bobby left the family hospitality business around 2017. He registered a company called Geophysx Jamaica Limited. He didn’t register it in Jamaica. He registered it in St. Lucia. He is the sole shareholder. And then Bobby started collecting.

Between 2017 and 2024, Geophysx acquired over seventy Special Exclusive Prospecting Licences from the Jamaican government. One man, through one offshore company, controls the mineral exploration rights to more than a third of Jamaica.

Compiled from Mines and Geology Division records

Every single licence was approved under the current JLP administration. Four consecutive ministers signed off:

Bobby’s father, Butch Stewart, donated J$31.5 million directly to the Holness administration — J$500,000 to each of Jamaica’s 63 Members of Parliament, from both parties. Not a single article in any Jamaican newspaper has asked how one man accumulated mineral exploration rights over 37% of the country.

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Part III: The Empire Bobby Comes From

To understand the weight behind Bobby Stewart’s name, you need to understand what the Stewart family controls. The ATL Group — founded by Butch Stewart over five decades ago — touches almost every aspect of daily Jamaican life.

The car you drive. The appliances in your kitchen. The coffee you drink. The newspaper you read. One family. And the eldest son now controls 37% of the island’s mineral rights through a company registered offshore.

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Part IV: The Pipeline

The minerals under the Bellas Gate hills didn’t just appear on somebody’s radar last year. International companies have known about this area since the 1990s.

Pay attention: Carube Copper is C3 Metals. Same company, renamed. The co-founder came from Barrick. The CEO came from Freeport. The licences ended up with Barrick and Freeport.

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Part V: The Switchback

Here is where the two roads meet — and double back on each other.

He now owns Geophysx — the licence holder that feeds Barrick. And he owns part of C3 — the company that feeds Freeport. Both sides of Jamaica’s mineral wealth run through one man. He is the gatekeeper.

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Part VI: What Jamaica Gets

The copper and gold come out of Jamaican soil. The core samples are shipped by DHL to Sudbury, Ontario. The profits flow to Phoenix, Arizona. Toronto. St. Lucia. And the people of Bellas Gate — what consultation have they had?

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Part VII: The Web of Connections

When you step back and see how every entity connects — the companies, the people, the government, the media, and the family — the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.

The Web of Licences, Companies & Connections

The People — Where They Came From

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Part VIII: The Silence

Everyone knows about Cockpit Country. The bauxite. The protests. The Maroons. It’s been in the news for years. People marched. Lawyers filed suits. International media showed up.

But Bellas Gate? The copper-gold project that could reshape St. Catherine? The seventy-plus licences covering a third of the island? The son of the most powerful business family in Jamaica controlling it all through an offshore company? Silence.

The Jamaica Observer — the newspaper founded by Bobby Stewart’s father — covered the Barrick Gold deal with Geophysx as routine business news. No disclosure that the subject of the story was the founder’s eldest son. No questions about how one man ended up with thirty-seven percent of the country’s mineral exploration rights.

The information has always been there. It’s in TSX Venture filings in Canada. It’s in the Mines and Geology Division register. It’s in C3 Metals press releases. All public. All accessible. It just hadn’t been assembled — because the family that owns the platform is the family at the centre of the story.

Drills are turning in Bellas Gate right now. Core samples are being packed into boxes and shipped across the ocean. Seventy-five million US dollars is flowing into a project most Jamaicans cannot name.

This is not a conspiracy theory. Every fact in this story comes from public records, corporate filings, and the companies’ own announcements. The transactions were disclosed — buried in stock exchange filings and government registers that nobody reads.

The question was never whether the information existed.

The question is why nobody told you.

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Sources

C3 Metals Inc. (TSX-V: CCCM) corporate filings and news releases, c3metals.com • Barrick Gold Corporation press release, May 1, 2024 • Geophysx Jamaica Limited • Jamaica Mines and Geology Division SEPL records • Jamaica Gleaner • Old Harbour News • Newsfile Corp. • Sandals Resorts International • ATL Automotive Group • UK Companies House records • Parliamentary speeches (Hansard). All information sourced from public records and corporate disclosures. No confidential material was used. The information was always there.Inside MOSS, the Intelligence Service of the Sovereign State of Accompong