After filing lawsuits against the principals of Cevons, Car Care and Courtney Benn, the government yesterday announced that it will settle with all three parties but vowed to pursue public officers who might have transgressed.
The cases against Cevons Waste Management’s Morse Archer and Car Care Enterprise owner Wilfred Branford sought to repossess lands sold to them under the former APNU+AFC administration and the other case was to recover large sums owed by Courtney Benn Contracting for incomplete capital works.
“We have reached an agreement with Cevons with that project and we will move forward on that, and similarly with Car Care, we have reached an agreement with that entity so that they don’t have to face court matters…we also reached agreement with Courtney Benn,” Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday told a press conference.
“The State will not pursue any legal action against these individuals,” he added.
Asked for details, the Vice President said that he did not wish to say anything else until the agreements were completed and promised that when that occurred the government will make them public.
Jagdeo said that government doesn’t “want to penalize unsuspecting businessmen” but will go “after the people who acted illegally.”
He alleged that former Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission-er Trevor Benn, who has already been slapped with a number of land fraud charges, had acted unlawfully. “We don’t want Guyanese caught up with the illegalities. We believe that Benn committed these illegalities,” Jagdeo said.
The PPP/C government that entered office in August last year had announced that all public land deals made by the APNU+AFC administration from December 21, 2018—when a no-confidence motion was passed against the former government—would be reviewed.
Attorney General Anil Nandlall SC echoed the Vice President’s position and told Stabroek News yesterday that he is discussing the terms of agreement with the respective persons and their legal counsel, and when the deals are completed they would be made public.
In Courtney Benn’s case, the Attorney General noted that this pertained to the large number of incomplete contracts.
“The cumulative effect of which was crippling to national progress. Were we to sue for the breach of each of those contracts, those projects would have been tied down in years of litigation without completion, which would have redounded to the detriment of the public’s interest and the interest of our citizens,” Nandlall said.
Fighting
“It must be understood, that the government is not a legal combatant against its citizens and government must be a provider of resources, services and of opportunities for its people. As a backdrop, fighting Courtney Benn in the courts would have been an exercise in which the government may have been victorious but the people and the country would have been the loser. It was decided to extricate Courtney Benn from those projects in order to allow the projects to proceed and an arrangement has been arrived at in relation to how his liabilities to the government, in relation to those contracts are to be discharged. Significantly, Mr. Courtney Benn accepted the precarious financial position that he is in and participated fully in this reconciliation and compromise in the national interest,” he added.
During September last year, Benn, the GL&SC Commission-er was instructed to proceed on 42 days’ vacation. Subsequent to that, he was terminated from the post with effect from February 4, 2021. He received his termination letter in November 2020, which gave him three months’ notice.
Benn was last week charged over the Cevons transaction which states that between August 31, 2018 and October 1, 2018 at the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission, Georgetown, while being a Public Officer, he misconducted himself by executing a sale of a parcel of land held under Transport No. 336 of 1925 — that portion known as Area C being portion of Track B Planta-tion Le Repentir, Georgetown. It contained an area of 1.356 acres — and he caused Cevons Waste Management Inc to pay the sum of $80,000,000 to the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission for the said parcel of land, knowing that at the time he did not have the authority to sell the said land, the said willful misconduct amounting to breach of public trust, without any excuse or reasonable justification.
In March, government filed court action to have lands sold to Car Care Enterprise owner Brandford repossessed and Benn and former Ministry of Finance Valuator Julian Barrington were also sued for in excess of $100 million each for their roles in the transaction.
Nandlall had said that the $13.5 million Brandford paid for the 0.710 and 0.887 acres was significantly lower than other applicants, with one person paying some $150M for a similar size in a location not far away.
Brandford had told Stabroek News that the $13.5 million he paid for the lands at the entrance to South Ruimveldt was too high a figure since he has spent tens of millions developing it over a 17-year period.
“When one will leave out the 17 years I spent and the millions upon millions and millions to develop that spot, the fact that I had at one time PPP/C support and that I was one of the first to be there, to single me out? You must have an agenda,” Brandford had said.
And as it pertains to Courtney Benn’s case, he and CARICOM General Insurance Company Inc. were in February sued for a total of just over $359 million pertaining to the incomplete Linden Technical Institute (LTI) dormitories. The action lodged came a month after the same two parties were sued in relation to the St Rose’s High School project for hundreds of millions.
Jagdeo said that government “took a conscious decision that we will not go to the court” and that it “didn’t pursue the hardline position here” but it will pursue the leading actors, including public officers.
