Shal­iza?Has­sanali

The Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) is seek­ing fur­ther le­gal ad­vice on the 22 "il­le­gal" leas­es is­sued un­der the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

This was con­firmed by Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is on Wednes­day dur­ing a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Bon Air South.

Her com­ments came days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley gave the as­sur­ance that he was not reneg­ing on his po­si­tion on so-called ap­provals giv­en by the pre­vi­ous CDA board which were in­con­sis­tent with the de­vel­op­ment plan ap­proved by Par­lia­ment and whose leas­es are con­sid­ered il­le­gal on the ba­sis of se­nior coun­sel ad­vice pro­vid­ed to the cur­rent board.

Row­ley made the state­ment based on a re­port sub­mit­ted by for­mer CDA chair­man An­tho­ny Pierre that all leas­es en­tered in­to dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2015 be "deemed il­le­gal and null and void."

Pierre re­signed on Au­gust 27, af­ter the board said he act­ed with­out prop­er ap­proval in is­su­ing let­ters of com­fort to Fouraime En­ter­pris­es Ltd (FEL) and Star­burst Parks Ltd.

Fouraime chair­man John Aboud who sunk close to $100 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ing a wa­ter park in Ch­aguara­mas said he had no in­ten­tion of aban­don­ing the project and viewed his 30-year-lease le­gal. An­oth­er busi­ness­man, Ray­mond Habib, who is set­ting up a sa­fari park, al­so said he was not go­ing to give up one square inch of land leased to him.

Stat­ing that any lease giv­en out must be ap­proved by Cab­i­net, Robin­son-Reg­is said "as far as we un­der­stand it and as far as we have seen none of the leas­es have been ap­proved by Cab­i­net. In law, the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Act in­di­cates that is the pro­ce­dure for ap­prov­ing a lease."

Robin­son-Reg­is said cer­tain things have since tak­en place and "we would have to move for­ward from there."

She said that a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee head­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, in­clud­ing Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and her­self was es­tab­lished.

"We have been meet­ing with the lease hold­ers, in par­tic­u­lar Mr Aboud."

Last week, Robin­son-Reg­is said a re­port com­mis­sioned by the CDA came be­fore Cab­i­net.

"As a con­se­quence of the con­tents of that re­port we (CDA) are mov­ing to seek fur­ther le­gal ad­vice and to bring it again be­fore the Cab­i­net for a de­ci­sion to be tak­en on a way for­ward."

How does Robin­son-Reg­is en­vis­age this is­sue to pan out? She said one is­sue the CDA had a con­cern about was to en­sure that none of the projects in­fringed on the beach ac­cess or the rights of the peo­ple.

"We will en­sure that any land that is leased is done prop­er­ly." In go­ing for­ward, Robin­son-Reg­is said CDA would do the right thing.

Habib, whose lease was deemed il­le­gal by the CDA, yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that with his busi­ness not be­ing in op­er­a­tion he had po­ten­tial prof­its in phase one of his project, pro­ject­ed at $690,000 month­ly.

"By the CDA with­hold­ing our doc­u­ments, not on­ly do we have an ex­pense every month that we have to main­tain over a year, we have al­so lost prof­its."

He al­so dis­closed that no one from the CDA or the com­mit­tee had spo­ken to him.

"As a busi­ness­man the last thing you want to do is go to court. We are will­ing to talk to who­ev­er to sort things out." he said