Latest update March 29th, 2025 5:38 AM
Alarm over possible forgery of Telcor legal documents
…did Robert Persaud’s sister really sign legal documents?
Questions of forgery have arisen regarding Telcor Broadcasting, the company which was granted five radio frequencies by then President Bharrat Jagdeo in 2011.
Ruth Baljit identification card.
The company is linked to Minister of National Resources and the Environment, Robert Persaud.
Documents seen by Kaieteur News indicate that the incorporator of the company is Ruth Baljit, the sister of Minister Persaud.
However, the signature on documents submitted to the Deeds Registry looks completely different than the one on Baljit’s New York Identification Card, which was also seen by Kaieteur News.
The Criminal Law Offences Act states that everyone who forges “any instrument whatsoever” that is deposited or recorded in the Deeds Registry “shall be guilty of a felony and liable to imprisonment for fourteen years.”
Baljit is a United States citizen, whose address is the Bronx, New York. Apart from Baljit, the other director of the company is Kamini Persaud, the niece of Jagdeo and also the wife of Minister Persaud.
Minister Persaud’s Permanent Secretary Omkar Lochan was the Company Secretary. Lochan has since resigned as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry.
The licence to Telcor Broadcasting was among 11 radio licences granted by Jagdeo the very month he left office – November 2011.
Others whom Jagdeo granted five radio frequencies were his best friend, Dr. Ranjisinghi ‘Bobby’ Ramroop and the ruling party’s newspaper.
All the other licencees received one radio frequency each, including those who cannot afford to set up a radio station.
These licences were granted ahead of long-standing applicants such as Stabroek News, Kaieteur News, and broadcasters Enrico Woolford and the late Hugh Cholmondeley.
Court documents show a stark contrast in signatures by Ruth Baljit on court documents.
Jagdeo had signed an agreement with then Opposition Leader Robert Corbin in May 2003, saying that no broadcast licences would be issued until the new broadcasting legislation comes into effect.
However, Jagdeo went ahead and granted those new frequencies almost one year before the broadcasting Act came into being at the end of August, 2012.
Two challenges have been filed in the High Court against the granting of radio frequencies by Jagdeo.
Broadcaster Enrico Woolford and the National Media and Publishing Company (publishers of Kaieteur News) in a joint action with the Guyana Media Proprietors Association are asking that the High Court quash Jagdeo’s decision.
The parties are asking the High Court to declare that Jagdeo’s granting of radio licences was “arbitrary, unconstitutional, unlawful, unfair, unreasonable, capricious, irrational, procedurally improper, ultra vires, null, void and of no legal effect.”
The action by Kaieteur News and the Media Proprietors Association is also against those who were granted cable licences by Jagdeo, namely his friend Brian Yong and the ruling party’s associate Vishok Persaud.
They claim that for 16 months after the allotment of the radio licences, the names of the persons who were granted licences “remained a dark secret within the bosom of President Jagdeo until the Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, was obliged to do so in the National Assembly.
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