Queen’s Atlantic land holdings bigger than reported

Oct 15, 2017 News

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advertises stateland to be mortgaged

A notice last week in the Official Gazette has raised questions about exactly how many plots of

land Queens Atlantic Investments Inc. (QAII) benefitted from.
According to the October 7 Notice of Debenture published in the Official Gazette of Guyana, a company called Future Development International Inc. located in the Industrial Site, Ruimveldt compound of QAII, has a piece of property, over six acres, in the Plantation Pattensen area.
The area is located south of the Railway Embankment, somewhere in the vicinity of Giftland Mall.
Future Development is moving to mortgage the six acres to the Guyana Bank For Trade and Industry (GBTI), hence the notice for any objections.
Representing Future Development is Director, Roopnarine Ramcharitar, and Secretary, Valeri Khan.
The notice would be significant as it was only a few weeks ago that questions were raised over another piece of property at Providence, East Bank Demerara.
Ramcharitar, a top deputy of businessman Dr. Ranjisinghi ‘Bobby’ Ramroop, was reportedly a key figure whose name appeared on Luxury Realty Inc., a company that was granted 28 acres of prime lands.
Ramcharitar not only managed to close a sweetheart land deal with Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) in August 2014, but on the same day, within a space of a few hours, he turned around and under the watchful eyes of the agency, sold it to an overseas buyer.
With the blessings of CH&PA, and without lifting a finger, Roopnarine ‘Ravie’ Ramcharitar made a whopping US$2M ($400M) profit on the spot.
The appearance now of the six acre plot at Pattensen would raise questions of what else Ramcharitar and by extension, QAII, benefitted from.
Ramroop is the personal friend of former President Bharrat Jagdeo. He is said to have benefitted extensively, from drug contracts, worth billions of dollars, to lands and properties, to tax concessions.
Heading the Ministry of Housing in 2014 was former minister, Irfaan Ali.
Pattensen is not an ordinary housing area. It is in high demand and once under the control of the controversial National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), which controls Government properties and its sales.

Some of the Pattensen lands were sold under controversial means to a few businessmen. With malls and luxury homes in the area, property prices would have been significant.
It is unclear when Future Development received possession of the land and how much it paid. It was also unclear whether the lands were ever advertised for sale by NICIL.
What is known is that Ramcharitar is reportedly likely to be investigated for not paying taxes on the hefty profit he made on the sale of the 28 acres at Providence to a New York businessman.
The QAII executive would have sold the land for three times the price he bought it, with the questionable blessings of the then management of the CH&PA.
There are no indications that the profit taxes were ever paid over by Ramcharitar to the Guyana Revenue Authority.
QAII’s acquisition of properties has over the years been under question with Industrial Site acquisition of the former Sanata Complex, where the group headquarters is located.
Several plots of East Bank Demerara lands remained undeveloped despite conditions that construction of the infrastructure had to start within six months, in some cases.
The Coalition Government had started moving to repossess some of those lands but ran into legal problems.
Ramcharitar’s transactions, while benefitting from a sweetheart deal blessed by CH&PA, would mirror Brian Tiwarie, owner of BK International.
Tiwarie’s company, Sunset Lakes Inc, managed to acquire 100 acres of lands not too far from Ramcharitar’s.
However, eight weeks after securing the lands from CH&PA for US$2.2M (approximately $440M), Tiwarie turned around and flipped the company to BaiShanLin for US$8M ($1.6B).
BaiShanLin is a Chinese investor that ran into trouble over its operations here and had its forest lands taken away by the Coalition Government.
BaiShanLin, now facing financial problems, was unable to pay Tiwarie the US$8M it promised and early last year, the businessman took BaiShanLin to court, asking for his balance of US$4M. Tiwarie also demanded back his company Sunset Lakes and wanted the court to forfeit the US$4M that BaiShanLin had advanced him.
There are more than 20,000 applications pending at the CH&PA, with Government announcing plans to build duplexes and apartments for low income families in the short term.
Large swaths of lands behind Republic Park and Providence have been sold under questionable circumstances to several private developers who were looking to cash in on the booming housing drive between 2010 and 2014.
CH&PA has been promising to go after the private developers for breaching their conditions, including the building of infrastructure like drains and roads.
This past week, CH&PA went to Sophia and demolished several properties which they said were illegal. The police were forced to halt the exercise after residents protested and the situation became tense.

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