Questions are being raised over the relationship of the late Anna Nicole Smith and the Bahamian immigration minister after a newspaper published photos of them embracing each other in bed.
The published on the front page of The Tribune of Nassau show the former Playboy Playmate lying in bed, fully clothed, with Immigration Minister Shane Gibson.
Smith and Gibson, who approved her application for permanent residency, are lying on a bed adorned with pink flowers and a white ribbon.
The Tribune said the photographs were taken in Smith's bedroom and that it obtained the pictures Sunday from an unidentified source.
Gibson has come under fire from the political opposition for giving Smith special treatment when he granted her residency in the Bahamas last year.
Bahamian Opposition leader Hubert Ingraham told The Associated Press he was making inquiries into the matter.
Smith based her residency application on the purported ownership of a waterfront mansion.
But G. Ben Thompson, a South Carolina developer who once dated Smith, has argued he had not given her the house as a gift.
Thompson is attempting to reclaim the house.
A representative of Anna Nicole Smith's companion, Howard K. Stern, scrambled on Monday to control distribution of items he said were stolen from the mansion before he returned from Florida.
Images from a computer were among the items taken from the house.
Ron Rale, Stern's spokesman, said in a statement on Monday that anyone who disseminates any of the items without his prior written consent "will be held liable to the fullest extent of the law."
Rale said police have recovered all the missing property.
All of Smith's personal items, including the birth certificate of her 5-month-old daughter, had been taken from the house, Rale said.
Over the weekend, Stern reclaimed the Bahamas mansion along with 5-month-old Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern.
They had lived in the gated waterfront estate, known as "Horizons," before Smith died last week.
Stern told "Entertainment Tonight" he was doing his best to keep Smith's mother Virgie Arthur from seeing the baby.
Arthur had travelled to the United States and went to the gates of the mansion on Sunday in an attempt to see her granddaughter.
"She just despised that woman," Stern said.
"As long as I have one breath left in my body that woman will not see Dannielynn," he added.
Stern is listed on a birth certificate as Dannielynn's father.
But two other men have stepped forward to challenge his paternity.
One of those men is Smith's former boyfriend Larry Birkhead, who has filed a lawsuit claiming he is the father.
And on Friday, Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband Prince Frederic von Anhalt said he might be father.
In the latest twist, The New York Daily News reported that a manuscript it obtained says Smith froze the sperm of her late 90-year-old husband, J. Howard Marshall II before his death and may have used it to become pregnant.
Smith had been waging a court battle over the estate of the Texas oil tycoon since his death in 1995.
A federal court in California awarded Smith US$474 million, but that was later overturned.
But the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case in May.
Experts say the ruling on who receives custody of the child could determine her inheritance.
About five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel died suddenly in the Bahamas in what was believed to be a drug-related death.
With files from The Associated Press
