A group headed by former APNU Member of Parlia-ment Desmond Trotman has moved to the High Court seeking, among other things, to have the sales of plots on two parcels of land known as Pradoville 1 and Pradoville 2 declared null and void as the sales were done surreptitiously at undervalued prices to former government ministers, officials and cronies of the PPP/C.
Trotman and the Committee for the Defence for the Constitution Inc had their lawyers Senior Counsel Rex McKay and Neil Boston, Bettina Glasford and Brenden Glasford file the action seeking ten declarations.
The applicants want the court to set aside the “purported sale and transfer to the putative owners” of the said parcels of land and an order directing each owner that the legal and beneficial ownership of the lands vest in the Minister of Finance.
Number five of the ten listed declarations being sought seeks to have the court find that the parcels of land in the two areas—officially known as Plantation Sparendaam and Plantation Goedverwagt-ing—were sold without “recourse to a valuation tender procedure or an invitation to the public that such lands are for sale [and] is a wrongful and unlawful grant of facilities and benefits…” Trotman and his group are also want the court to find that the sale was a brazen and flagrant infringement of their and citizens’ right to equality before the law in violation of Article 149D of the Constitution.
The Attorney General’s Chambers is listed as the respondent to the action filed.
The two plot of lands have courted controversy for years as there was no clear policy regards their sale, the parcels were sold at very low prices and it was only persons in the former PPP/C government or those close to the government along with a few public officials who were granted plots. Former president Bharrat Jagdeo has built a mansion on the Sparendaam plot which in 2011 came under public criticism when former head of the presidential secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon had listed several persons who would have been offered land in that area.
Testifying in the $10 million libel case brought by Jagdeo against Kaieteur News and columnist Freddie Kissoon, Luncheon had named former Region 10 Chairman Mortimer Mingo as one of the persons who was offered land in that section. Mingo later said he refused the offer. Others who have land there are chairman of the Caribbean Develop-ment Bank Dr Compton Bourne and former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force Commodore Gary Best, who is now an advisor in the Ministry of the Presidency.
The applicants are also seeking to have the court rule that the grant of titles to the parcels of land was arbitrary, unconstitutional, unlawful, unreasonable, an abuse of power of the executive and an infringement of their and the people’s fundamental right not to be treated in a discriminatory manner in contravention of Article 149(1) and (2) of the Constitution and the rule of law.
According to the court documents, sometime in 2010 Jagdeo and his cabinet ministers “covertly conceived clandestinely to develop without parliamentary knowledge or approval, two pieces of lands…” The project, the court documents said, involved an expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the lands and to construct roads and drains, install water mains, electrical lines and remove the 3,300 ft state-owned broadcasting towers from the said lands and install same at Parfait Harmonie, West Bank Demerara. The towers were removed from the Sparendaam plot of land.
No money was authorized by Parliament for the development of the project which was done through the wrongful and unlawful authorization of former minister of finance Dr Ashni Singh through the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL). It said the money used had been collected by government corporations and other wholly owned government companies such as the Guyana Geology & Mines Commission (GGMC), the Guyana Forestry Commis-sion (GFC) and Guyoil all of which should have been paid to the Consolidated Fund as mandated by Article 216 of the Constitution.
It was also stated that in July 2010 Executive Director of NICIL Winston Brassington directed Shabeer Ali, a sworn Land Surveyor, to survey and paal off the said lands situate at Goodverwagtng and Sparendaam. The survey was carried out and completed on July 1 2010 and the plan of the said lands was recorded in the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission as Plan 47971 dated July 1, 2010.
“Parcels of the said state lands of varying sizes and prices were clandestinely, wrongfully and unlawfully sold and title transferred on the authorization and direction of the executive to ministers of government, cronies, friends and supporters of the People’s Progressive Party,” the court action said.
It pointed out that no advertisement was made by the Government as vendor in the print or electronic media in Guyana informing the public that the parcels of lands were for sale. The sale and transfer of the titles, according to the group, was a brazen abuse of power in contravention of Articles 149 and 149D of the Constitution and in breach of the rule of law and equality before the law.
