Ernesto Abra­ham, di­rec­tor of Dachin Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd said he is dis­turbed by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's de­scrip­tion of the grant­i­ng of land to Movi­eTowne own­er Derek Chin by the Gov­ern­ment as "grand theft."

In an open let­ter to Row­ley dat­ed Ju­ly 30, Abra­ham re­ferred to a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle of Ju­ly 23.

Abra­ham said he was "dis­turbed" and "dis­ap­point­ed" by the state­ments at­trib­uted to Row­ley "and that Dachin Com­mer­cial De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Derek Chin, should have specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned in con­nec­tion with an al­le­ga­tion of theft of state lands."

"The state­ments are gross­ly in­ac­cu­rate and mis­lead­ing and al­so con­sti­tute a di­rect at­tack on the rep­u­ta­tion and pub­lic im­age of Chin who is an em­i­nent pub­lic fig­ure who is al­so well known to you per­son­al­ly, hav­ing served pre­vi­ous­ly as one of your cam­paign man­agers when you ran for the PNM lead­er­ship against Patrick Man­ning inn the late 1990s."

Last Oc­to­ber, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my Dr Bhoe Tewarie re­ceived le­gal ad­vice from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's Of­fice which gave the green light to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) to lease land at In­vaders Bay, Port-of-Spain, for a pri­vate bil­lion-dol­lar project. The ad­vice gave Ude­cott the au­thor­i­ty to sub­lease the land to three de­vel­op­ers who had been cho­sen by the min­istry af­ter a sole se­lec­tive ten­der­ing process.

The AG had sought le­gal ad­vice on the mat­ter from Sir Fen­ton Ram­sa­hoye, SC, since 2012, amidst con­cerns raised by the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), rep­re­sent­ing the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, about the cloak of se­cre­cy over the project and at­tempts to get in­for­ma­tion on it from the Gov­ern­ment.

Abra­ham said Dachin has al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of land at In­vaders Bay as it is a "nat­ur­al ex­ten­sion" of the cur­rent Movi­eTowne fa­cil­i­ty.

He said Movi­eTowne has added val­ue to the area and Dachin has been ne­go­ti­at­ing with the min­istry for a small por­tion of the In­vaders Bay lands since the ma­jor­i­ty was not in­clud­ed in the ini­tial ten­der process un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of Plan­ning. He said Dachin's plan for the land is to cre­ate an in­no­v­a­tive re­al-es­tate de­vel­op­ment that will fa­cil­i­tate sub­stan­tial com­mer­cial, fi­nan­cial, res­i­den­tial and en­ter­tain­ment op­tions for the na­tion­als of T&T.

Abra­ham said Dachin was in­vit­ed to be part of the ten­der­ing process es­tab­lished by the Min­istry of Plan­ning for di­vest­ment of the lands.

"Dachin's pro­pos­al was sub­mit­ted in ac­cor­dance with the per­mit­ted rules, and af­ter the eval­u­a­tion process was com­plet­ed, it emerged as the high­est rat­ed pro­pos­al. In the cir­cum­stances, both Dachin and I take ex­cep­tion of the pur­port­ed as­ser­tion we have some­how en­gaged in the theft of the In­vaders Bay lands. Such a claim is patent­ly un­true."

Abra­ham called on Row­ley to apol­o­gise for his "high­ly in­flam­ma­to­ry com­ments."

"If how­ev­er, the state­ment was not made by you, it is hoped that you would use this in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in this let­ter to make a pub­lic com­ment clar­i­fy­ing the PNM's po­si­tion on this mat­ter," he added.