Local businessman Lennox Cush is seeking to develop the controversial Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara land that was once sold to Russian oligarch Oleg Derispaska’s company Rusal for $150 million and for which Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh and former National Industrial and Commercial and Investments Limited (NICIL) head Winston Brassington were charged.
“I bought the property since 2019 and I just find it strange that Stabroek News would now seek to ask about it. Why? I know the history, yes. It was the Russian guy’s own and all of that, but I have had it for a long time,” he told this newspaper when contacted yesterday.
“No development has started as yet. Clearing of the land has begun, … And yes I know what I am putting there but I do not wish to share it [those plans] …,” he added.
In April of 2018, this newspaper had reported that a decade after 4.7 acres of land at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, were controversially sold to Russian aluminium company Rusal, purportedly for the construction of a vacation home for its president Oleg Deripaska, the property remained neglected and there had been no word on plans for its development.
The land was sold to Rusal upon a directive by former president Bharrat Jagdeo and the sale had become the subject of a court case brought against Singh and Brassington under the APNU+AFC government.
Both men had been charged in their absence with three counts of misconduct in public office. It was alleged that Singh and Brassington sold a tract of land, being 4.7 acres at Plantation Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara, which was the property of Guyana, for the sum of $150 million to Scady Business Corporation, while knowing that the property was valued at $340 million by Rodrigues Architects Limited.
Singh was Finance Minister at the time of the sale, while Brassington was the r head of NICIL. Nandlall had argued that his two clients were carrying out the mandate of the government at the time, which had taken a political decision to have the land sold. He then said that they were acting on behalf of NICIL and that it was this entity which authorised the sale and not Singh or Brassington. And to this end questioned why the DPP would have singled out just two persons and not charged the entire board of NICIL also.
He had argued further that while one has to be a prudent vendor, assuming but not accepting that his clients were imprudent, it could not amount to their actions being criminal or that criminal liability should be attached to them. Additionally, he had said that one may want to argue that it was a bad political decision to have sold the land in that manner, it could not be the standard of the criminal law that such actions should give rise to criminal liability.
Nandlall had argued, also, that criminal law could not attract sanction for the use of an opinion on a valuation from one person against another. “So how are they charged with misconduct in public office when [the seller] was NICIL?” Nandlall asked.
He had said that the transaction was standard procedure at the time, given the market value at which the government decided to sell, irrespective of an opinion of one valuation officer. “It is just that, an opinion,” he argued.
In their application challenging the validity of the charges, the men were seeking to have the DPP’s decision to institute the charges against them reviewed and ultimately quashed.
In December of 2020, the charges against the duo were withdrawn.
Meanwhile, when this newspaper visited in 2018, the land was covered in bush and no work had been done. People in the area had said the land had been used for grazing cows but people had stopped using it in recent years.
Sources knowledgeable of the transaction had told this newspaper that the intended purpose of the land was to build a vacation home for Deripaska. Asked why the land was never developed, a source said “the main issue was that it was paid for. If the man did not wish to build as yet, it is his land.”
But locals purchasing land from the government have been pressured to start works or be subjected to it being repossessed regardless of it being paid for in full, according to the terms of the purchase.
When this newspaper visited yesterday, an entrance to the land was made and clearing of it had begun. Due to the heavy rainfall over the past weeks, the entrance was waterlogged. Workers in the area said that machinery had been on the land recently and had cleared off the thick bushes that had taken it over.
