On August 7 this year, less than a week after the government had assumed office, AG Anil Nandlall issued a statement indicating that all leases, licences and permissions to occupy public lands which had been granted since December 21, 2018, were to be reviewed. This was the date on which a no confidence vote against the APNU+AFC government had been passed in Parliament, following which, as he pointed out, it enjoyed only caretaker status. NICIL, for example, had transferred GuySuCo lands to private entities up to a few days before the election.
At the same time that this was made public, Mr Nandlall also announced that the powers which former President Granger in 2016 had delegated to the Commissioner of the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission in relation to the renting and granting of leases and the permission to occupy public lands had been revoked by President Irfaan Ali. It was subsequently followed by the decision to send Commissioner Trevor Benn on leave. Mr Benn had explained at the time that Mr Granger had given him these powers with a view to speeding up land lease allocations in circumstances where the commission had been accused of sloth.
Where the allocation of land is involved, whether by Lands & Surveys or by NICIL, speed is not the issue but due process. And as far as that is concerned, various questionable transactions have started to come to light. Last week the Attorney General passed three files to the police and SOCU so they could investigate the leasing of state lands at Peters Hall, EBD, which had been effected without there being any prior evaluation, public advertisement or Cabinet decision. As we reported, two pieces of land had been transferred by the lease-holders to the same Chinese national not long after they had secured NICIL’s approval for the lease, while in another case, PNCR member James Bond had received US$952,800 for the sale of the lease rights to a company of which he is the principal. He declined to speak to this newspaper on the matter.
Mr Nandlall is asking those who obtained the leases to relinquish the properties so they could revert to the state and due process could then be followed. He told this newspaper that project profiles for the intended works on the land had not been submitted, and the land which had been divested and assigned to a third party went for $100. In other words, 20 acres sold for less than US50 cents. “The state will expend every effort to get back those lands,” the AG was quoted as saying.
The situation regarding lands sold at Ogle is little better. Two days before the March 2 polls the former Cabinet approved an agreement of sale for land identified for a hotels project, subsequent to which it issued an order for the transfer of title. The latter was done despite the fact that among other things the company had failed to submit records of due diligence and had only made a 10% down payment instead of the 50% required. In addition, before title could be issued, certain works should have commenced, including the construction of a 180-room hotel within the first 18 months.
The land involved in this case had previously been under cane cultivation by GuySuCo, and NICIL had conducted an internal review which had found that neither the government company nor the private purchaser had fulfilled critical obligations before, during and after the execution of the sale agreement.
The AG told Stabroek News that, “This one has some element of a process, but clearly there was undue haste to pass the title over to the purchaser, and you [sh]ould look at the date when the Cabinet approval came and its proximity to the elections, as well as the fact that the vesting order, which constitutes title in law, was issued after APNU+AFC would have lost the election.” It is, he said, a case of Cabinet being “in violation of its own Cabinet decision.”
As in the instance of the Peters Hall lands, Mr Nandlall has said that the police would be asked to investigate the sale for possible criminal conduct, and he is appealing to the company to return the land to the state and then reapply by sending an expression of interest.
A Trinidadian businessman who had also signed an agreement to build a hotel at Ogle would likewise have to reapply.
While these revelations confirm that nothing much changed in Guyana during the space of the last five years, the current involvement of the police does not necessarily inspire total confidence either that we are about to enter a new era where confronting land corruption is concerned. After all, in its previous terms in office, there were various allegations in relation to lands directed at the PPP/C administration. Despite the fact that the coalition government set up the State Assets Recovery Agency to repossess state property illegally acquired, or obtained under circumstances where there had been a failure of due process, it did not achieve very much. It has now been disbanded.
Its most high-profile activity pertained to the purchase of land at Pradoville 2 at below market prices by senior members of the PPP/C government and their associates, a matter which ended up in court. One of the cases related to 19 fraud charges levelled against President
Ali before he became head of state in connection with the sale of state lands in the scheme. These charges have now been withdrawn by SOCU in the interest of smooth and effective governance, according to the agency’s prosecutor, Mr Patrice Henry. He told this newspaper that although the matter could be followed up after the President demitted office, the utility of doing so at that stage would have been lost, more especially if he were re-elected to a second term.
Where the current land issues pertaining to the East Coast and East Bank are concerned, it is clear that the previous president did not keep much of an eye on his subordinates and delegated authority without having any monitoring system in place to see that it was not abused. Furthermore, he did not appear to show much interest in the details of government, otherwise he would have noticed immediately that in the case of some of the Ogle land transactions the Cabinet, as the current AG has said, violated its own decisions. And in this country a head of state cannot afford to ignore the details unless he has someone of administrative ability under him to keep a grip on things and advise him accordingly.
Mr Nandlall has been quoted as saying: “Certainly we cannot turn a blind eye to such blatantly corrupt deals. Government has a duty to ensure it protects state assets and when they are divested that they are done so by a transparent process where citizens are afforded a fair opportunity and the lands are either sold at market value or some use is put to it that will be for the public good.” No reasonable citizen will disagree with this. But where is the watchdog which will ensure this will happen, and could guarantee that all land deals involving the state will follow due process?
