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Sunday, July 6, 2025

HDC probe into political kickbacks

by

20160123

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars were used to pay off po­lit­i­cal debts un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Sun­day Guardian re­ceived a list of some 24 names which in­clude me­dia per­son­nel and a num­ber of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivists now be­fore the HDC board un­der sus­pi­cion of re­ceiv­ing state hous­es out­side the nor­mal qual­i­fi­ca­tion process. The list con­tains the names of peo­ple al­lo­cat­ed state hous­es over the past five years, some which they claim have no doc­u­men­ta­tion, sev­er­al on a rent to own, and even one up­scale pent­house ful­ly paid off with­in the past three years.

The Sun­day Guardian has learned that the gat­ed Fi­delis Heights hous­ing com­pound has been a pop­u­lar al­lo­ca­tion spot and now hous­es as many as 17 peo­ple with close links to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. These were al­lo­cat­ed homes with­in the last five years. In­sid­ers close to the HDC board have re­vealed that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions seem to be cen­tered on the role of sus­pend­ed man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jear­lean John.

In De­cem­ber, John and sev­en oth­er high-lev­el ex­ec­u­tives were sus­pend­ed by the new­ly in­stalled HDC board led by New­man George. The board sus­pend­ed the eight em­ploy­ees pend­ing the out­come of an in­de­pen­dent au­dit in­to the HDC's op­er­a­tions un­der John's watch. That au­dit is ex­pect­ed to con­clude in Feb­ru­ary.

John had con­tend­ed then that the sus­pen­sion was noth­ing more than a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy de­signed to re­move her from the HDC be­cause even though she was ini­tial­ly hired by the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in 2009, one year lat­er when the Gov­ern­ment changed, the in­com­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) kept her in charge of the HDC.

The Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that the in­ter­nal au­dit is go­ing back on­ly five years.

The Sun­day Guardian has learned that when John took over at the HDC back in 2009, she im­ple­ment­ed a sys­tem that ac­tu­al­ly re­moved her and her of­fice from the process of se­lec­tion and al­lo­ca­tion.

Un­der John's watch, the se­lec­tion and al­lo­ca­tion could on­ly be au­tho­rised by the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing.

Un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, for­mer min­is­ter of hous­ing Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ced­ed that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and al­lowed his chair­man, Ra­bindra Moo­nan, to au­tho­rise the al­lo­ca­tion of hous­es.

The Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that the HDC board is now ques­tion­ing whether John was in­volved in the hous­ing hand­outs or com­plic­it in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's move to give hous­es to po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ists.

Those loy­al­ists al­so held prime po­si­tions un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­clud­ing seats on state boards and hefty URP and Cepep con­tracts and now boast hous­es in Ed­in­burgh 500 de­vel­op­ment.

But one HDC in­sid­er who has re­mained at the or­gan­i­sa­tion de­spite the change in gov­ern­ments has said that the HDC was of­ten used to re­pay po­lit­i­cal sup­port over the years.

That HDC in­sid­er has ques­tioned the most re­cent HDC han­dover cer­e­mo­ny in which two key PNM ac­tivists were al­lo­cat­ed hous­es "in record time."

"In less than a month, peo­ple sign up and get hous­es," she said.

The in­sid­er named one se­nior ex­ec­u­tive in the PNM's women's league and one man who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the PNM in­ter­nal elec­tions and now serves as a mem­ber of the PNM po­lit­i­cal team.

Min­is­ter can al­lo­cate 40 per cent of state hous­es

For­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has said that a sit­ting min­is­ter of hous­ing can on­ly make "lim­it­ed rec­om­men­da­tions" for the al­lo­ca­tion of hous­es. But ac­cord­ing to HDC pol­i­cy, that min­is­ter can al­lo­cate up to 40 per cent of the avail­able state hous­es; the re­main­ing 60 per cent is de­ter­mined by the Min­istry of Hous­ing and that com­piled list is then sent to the HDC for al­lo­ca­tion. The se­lec­tion process is strict­ly a min­is­te­r­i­al right.


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