Home News AG points out Nigel Hughes’ ‘duplicity’ in calls for Govt to halt...
…says $30M per acre price-tag for land
was set by APNU/AFC
Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister Anil Nandlall, S.C., has dismissed calls by the Opposition for Government to halt all transactions involving state assets until after the upcoming 2025 General and Regional Elections, slated for later this year.
Over the past few days, the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA) of the Ministry of Housing and Water has been in the spotlight regarding allegations of corruption and collusion over the sale of prime lands at Ogle on the East Coast of Demerara for $30 million per acre.
There has since been calls by some quarters of the Opposition for the government to cease all sale of state lands.
But AG Nandlall pointed to the duplicity of these calls, arguing that this is same party – A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition – which had embarked on a massive land give-away while it was in a caretaker mode, after failing to a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) in December 2019, and then during the period after the March 2020 elections while it illegally hung onto power for five months.
“The duplicity that inheres in this whole imbroglio is amazing… How do you ask a government that is exercising all its legitimate powers to halt the execution of those legitimate power until the elections – an election that is 10 months from now, constitutionally due. So, we must not do any developmental plans [and] we must not proceed with any investments for 10 months; when your party was in office and defeated by a no-confidence motion, you were dissipating assets with an amazing speed. And even after you lost the government, and you stayed in the government for five months illegally, you were still signing properties over, completing the transactions that you did at the time you were illegal but prior to the elections,” Nandlall posited during his weekly programme, Issues in the News, on Tuesday evening.
Unlike the Coalition Administration, the Attorney General outlined that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government currently has all of its “panoply and plenitude of powers” like any other legally-elected government.
This controversy surrounding the CHPA has attracted widespread criticisms with leader of the AFC, Nigel Hughes, raising questions about the $30 million price-tag of that prime lands at Ogle, implying that it’s rooted in corruption.
However, AG Nandlall, during his programme, sought to explain the process of determining the cost of State lands sold to private developers. He reminded of the Coalition’s give-away large of swathes of prime land including two transactions involving 900 acres at Ogle, where the land was sold for $30 million per acre and title was vested without any payment made. He also noted that lands were sold at Le Resouvenir, Chateau Margot, Ogle, Providence, Georgetown, West Demerara, and properties within the staff compounds at the Enmore, Linden and Wales Estates.
“In 2020 when we got into Government, I received piles and piles of files of transactions that were done under the previous government, contracts were already signed for huge swathes of lands,” he stated.
According to Nandlall, the PPP/C Government spent a lot of correcting these, and while some of those beneficiaries would have returned the lands to the state, transactions were completed with the others.
“We could’ve nullified all of them, and lock up many many people, but we didn’t want to spend five years just doing that. We had an agenda to develop the country… [and with] some of them, we decided to conclude the transactions and we concluded the transactions at $30 million per acre,” he noted, adding that the same was applied for some lands on the East Bank of Demerara, where many leases were also illegally issued by the Coalition regime.
“And $30 million was the price that we used – and where we get it from? We got it from the existing agreements which we inherited [from the Coalition]. So, that is where the $30 million per acre came from… So, when they are questioning and seem to be suggesting that $30 million (per acre) was a gift to some special person, that is not so.”
According to Nandlall, the CHPA seemed to have continued using that $30 million per acre to sell the land in those areas along the East Coast and East Bank corridors.
While noting that the price is often determined by the market value and the volume of the investment to be made, he pointed out that concessions are often granted to attract the investments.
Regarding the sale of lands by the CHPA to contentious characters, the Attorney General said he is only engaged on these matters when legal advice is required.
“Now, I don’t work with the Central Housing and Planning, I don’t monitor their day-to-day activities, so I am not in receipt of who gets lands or not, following the government’s process. I don’t know whether this company get land, or that company. Transactions come to me for legal advice when legal issues arises and I am not here to defend who buy property in New York, and how they get properties in New York and how they pay for it, that is not my business and is not the government’s business either so don’t pin that or ask me to explain that… I am unaware of that and that is not government’s business,” he declared.
Responding to Hughes, AG Nandlall reminded that the AFC Leader – a prominent lawyer by profession, had represented a client who got lands for $26 million per acre at Ogle during the period when the Coalition was in caretaker mode.
The CHPA controversy had resulted in its Chief Executive Officer, Sherwyn Greaves, resigning from the post.
President Dr Irfaan Ali has already made it clear that strict conditions are attached to the sale of land for development and that any breaches to Guyana’s land policy by private developers will result in the repossession of land.
