Shal­iza Has­sanali

Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) squat­ter Bruno Moli­nari has been evict­ed from the in­com­plete three-bed­room house which he has been oc­cu­py­ing at Li­ons Gate De­vel­op­ment at Egypt Street, Ch­agua­nas. Re­tained by Brave Li­on In­dus­tries, award­ed a $156 mil­lion con­tract by the HDC to con­struct Li­ons Gate De­vel­op­ment in April 2007, Moli­nari was sent pack­ing one day af­ter a Jan­u­ary 16 Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle high­light­ed that he took up res­i­dence in one of the hous­es on the HDC site. The 59-year-old Moli­nari was not the on­ly one evict­ed from the HDC house. Six Ja­maica na­tion­als il­le­gal­ly on the site were al­so giv­en march­ing or­ders. Moli­nari, an Italy-born who resided in Cana­da was hired for his ex­per­tise in build­ing acrylic fin­ished hous­ing for Brave Li­on, which re­quired no paint­ing and main­te­nance for up to 30 years.

A source at the site told the Sun­day Guardian that Moli­nari and the Ja­maicans were vis­it­ed by an HDC crew. "Moli­nari was told that he had to go. He just packed up the lit­tle fur­nish­ing he had and left."

The source said Moli­nari who in­di­cat­ed he was leav­ing Trinidad in the next few weeks did not put up a fight. "Bruno has since moved in­to a friend's house close by, while the Ja­maicans are search­ing for work." Moli­nari, who was paid $40,000 a month by Brave Li­on as site rep­re­sen­ta­tive and had the lux­u­ry of a $187,000 Toy­ota ve­hi­cle, took up oc­cu­pan­cy in No­vem­ber 2007 when his em­ploy­ers could not pay his $11,000 a month rental at Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, nor his month­ly salary.

The perks and salary of­fered were all part of a shake hand deal Moli­nari had struck with Brave Li­on in Sep­tem­ber 2007. Dur­ing the day, Moli­nari oc­cu­pied an air con­di­tioned freight con­tain­er which Brave Li­on used as a site of­fice. At nights he oc­cu­pied a near­by HDC unit, which was not equipped with wa­ter or elec­tric­i­ty. With no mon­ey forth­com­ing Moli­nari said he was forced to oc­cu­py one of the 71 three-bed­room sin­gle units. The site which is 99 per cent com­plete al­so has 160 three bed­room town hous­es.

HDC: Brave Li­on was paid

While HDC is main­tain­ing that Brave Li­on has been paid monies for work com­plet­ed, one of the di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny, Joseph Azar con­tin­ues to main­tain they are still owed mon­ey.

Azar, who in last week's Sun­day Guardian stat­ed that Brave Li­on was last paid in 2009 by the HDC, main­tained his po­si­tion. He, how­ev­er, re­ferred all oth­er ques­tions to Pe­ter Ag­nel­li, the com­pa­ny's Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer, who now lives in Cana­da. "They paid mon­ey in 2009. I know of that. Ac­tu­al de­tails on­ly the COO would be able to an­swer that. Def­i­nite­ly, I could tell you if it was paid in full, it would not have reached where it reach."