Public attention is habitually focused on what happens at central government level, even although decisions taken at the local level may have a greater impact on the daily lives of villagers in any given location. Nothing illustrates this better than the saga involving the sale of 143.1 acres of land by the Beterverwagting/Triumph Neighbourhood Democratic Council. The whole proposal was misconceived from the beginning, since the lands in question for the most part were not owned by the NDC at all, and as a consequence it was not in a position to sell them.
According to Councillor Elton McRae, in August of last year the NDC told the residents of BV/Triumph that John Fernandes Ltd had approached them with a proposal to purchase 200 acres of lands listed as Sections F and G. A survey was then undertaken following which at a statutory meeting in November it was agreed to sell the company Section G.
According to Mr McRae, the NDC was supposed to meet again to settle on a price, but this meeting never happened, although an agreement of sale with the Fernandes company still went ahead on November 30, 2021. Apparently, he said, many councillors were not aware that the land had private owners and was simply not the NDC’s to sell. This is despite the fact that when the sale was initially mooted the matter had been discussed with villagers, and it had emerged in the course of those discussions that most of the land under consideration was privately owned ancestral land.
The villagers themselves only found out about the sale in December 2021 after the document had been leaked, a revelation which inevitably produced protests including one from a Councillor who registered objections in the course of a council meeting. The deal was worth $35 million, of which JFL was to pay $20 million on the signing of the agreement and the balance on the passing of transport. The company had already made its down payment when it got cold feet on learning of the objections.
If the behaviour of the NDC does it no credit, the behaviour of John Fernandes Ltd has done its reputation no favours either. Initially its approach seemed commendable enough. CEO Phillip Fernandes told this newspaper: “When people objected and started saying we should not be buying the land and it belonged to other people, we said if there are people who made claims and there might be legitimacy to the claims, we don’t want to go against that. So it was safer for us to say, let us take a step back and we can always look elsewhere because it wasn’t an immediate need for us…” He then added what appeared to be a sensitive remark, saying, “Guyanese have gotten a raw deal for years and the last thing we wanted was to be part of something where people felt they were getting a raw deal again, and we walked.”
It turns out that the company’s sensitivities to the difficulties faced by the common people were a good deal less pronounced than Mr Fernandes’s comments might suggest. The insincerity involved was, however, not immediately apparent. First there was a sequence of events which had even the NDC puzzled. Once Fernandes decided not to pursue the agreement, the Council thought that everything had returned to the status quo ante, and that all they had to discuss with the company was the return of the $20 million. Not so. They soon discovered that an entirely different business entity had entered the story.
This company with which the NDC had never had dealings was Mohamed’s Sons and Daughters Trading, and when the Council wrote CEO Phillip Fernandes, they received a response, not from the Fernandes company, but from the Company Secretary of this new firm. It has to be observed that this could not have happened unless John Fernandes Ltd had handed over the Council’s letter to Mohamed’s. In addition, they did it without affording the NDC any warning or explanation. At the very least, this is less than acceptable business practice.
What the Company Secretary of this new player in the game told the Council was that John Fernandes Ltd was in the process of signing over all their rights, etc, to Mohamed’s by way of a Deed of Assignment. The company received the deed on June 13th. As we reported earlier, this newspaper’s attempts to contact this company did not meet with success at the time. Its Managing Director was listed as Mohan Mohamed Johnson, and its address as Lot 61 Fourth Street Cummings Lodge. Calls to the mobile number given went to voicemail, and when our reporter checked out the address, it turned out to be a dilapidated cottage sited on land covered with grass, bushes and small trees. In addition, it had no access bridge, and we were informed by neighbours that it had been abandoned a long time ago. As we asked before, what kind of a company is it that John Fernandes Ltd appears to have seen fit to thrust on the BV NDC without prior notice?
Nothing much was heard from John Fernandes Ltd immediately thereafter, but last month NDC Chairman Jimmaul Bagot and the Council called a press conference to complain that they were fighting an attempt to “bully” them into handing over the 143 acres under the deal with John Fernandes Ltd which had fallen through. Mr Bagot was reported as saying that the Council could not sell land which it did not own, much less to a company it had never made an agreement with, and that they would not be bullied.
At the end of September the NDC refunded the $20 million advance payment to JFL, which is when that company finally came out into the open. It declined to accept the money saying it had transferred its interest in the matter to Mohamed’s Sons and Daughters Trading, Mining, Logging and Construction Inc through the real estate agent who had been pressing for the sale. So more than two months after the initial withdrawal from the arrangement, the Fernandes company admitted that it had acceded to the rights to the agreement being transferred to Mohamed’s and that it had received a refund of the deposit from the latter.
More strangely, the company said: “JFL would not support any illegitimate sale of land, however, it remains a matter for the judicial system to determine whether this is the case. JFL wishes to state unequivocally, that it is not connected or conducting business with Mohamed and Sons and Daughters, Trading, Mining, Logging and Construction Inc.” Well if it isn’t, why didn’t it simply accept the refund from the NDC, more particularly since it seems to believe that the courts would have to decide who actually owns the land? What exactly, therefore, did it tell Mohamed’s about the land? As it is Mohamed’s has since taken the NDC to court in a bid to secure the 143.1 acres.
And then we have this new actor in the drama, a real estate agent who is not named, and may have pressed the NDC for the initial sale. Whatever the case, the price cited for the land, as some commentators have already observed, was absurdly cheap. Whatever else can be said, this estate agent had no concerns about ancestral, privately-owned land, because if it had been competent at any level, it would have been aware of the situation. If Mohamed’s was in fact alerted to ownership matters, it clearly had no qualms about still going to court.
This is a sordid tale with none of the main players emerging with their reputations intact. A section of the NDC had clearly pushed through a sale to JFL without taking account of information which the villagers provided, let alone their opinions. That is not the democratic, consultative way to run a local government, any more than it is a central one. If that were not bad enough, they did not even accept a realistic figure for the sale, which means they took no advice. Chairman Bagot had said he would resign, but has rescinded that in view of the latest developments.
Then there is the unacceptable behaviour of JFL, which if it really had no connection to Mohamed’s, and if it really was concerned about the “raw deal” so many Guyanese get, had absolutely no excuse for not accepting the refund from the Council. But instead, it went ahead with having the rights in the agreement transferred to Mohamed’s, apparently, it now emerges, in the full knowledge that ownership of the land might require a resort to the courts. It has the taint of hypocrisy about it.
There is, of course, the unnamed real estate agent, whose full role has not yet emerged, but from the little information which is available was anxious to secure a deal on the land in question, no matter who it belonged to.
And finally there is Mohamed’s, which is taking the matter to court. Did they do any due diligence in regard to the land, or were they just persuaded by whatever the real estate agent had to say? Alternatively, was it that they did not care about ownership issues in the light of a potentially good contract? No doubt there are more details yet to be revealed.
Whatever the case, there is a lesson here for all local government entities seeking to do deals with private companies of whatever standing.
