Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

A three-phase, 2.4-acre de­vel­op­ment in Cunu­pia called “Spring­field Gar­dens” is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Fraud Squad of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for al­leged fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments ap­prov­ing its con­struc­tion.

This was con­firmed by Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed and the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (CBC), Di­anne Lakhan. The Fraud Squad al­so con­firmed it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter based on a re­port made on No­vem­ber 25, 2022.

At the mo­ment, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 fam­i­lies oc­cu­py homes across two of the phas­es.

There are 14 lots per phase, while a pro­posed third phase com­pris­ing 17 lots is un­der con­struc­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to res­i­dents, they each paid be­tween $1.8 mil­lion to $1.9 mil­lion for a home.

With 28 fam­i­lies in oc­cu­pan­cy, this means de­vel­op­ers could have earned more than $50 mil­lion in house sales.

Ac­cord­ing to the CBC and some res­i­dents of the de­vel­op­ment, the first two phas­es were con­struct­ed by the de­vel­op­ers with­out the nec­es­sary ap­provals from the CBC or the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

As a re­sult, many of the 28 home­own­ers said they are in a bind, un­able to get com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates, and left with apart­ments that they claim are poor­ly built.

In the ab­sence of the nec­es­sary ap­provals and a lengthy list of con­struc­tion is­sues, the home­own­ers said they are hav­ing trou­ble with their mort­gages, with in­ter­est rates go­ing up for loans be­cause their house val­u­a­tions have de­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

They said they will al­so be un­able to re­sell the homes as the cor­po­ra­tion can legal­ly put a hold on or con­demn the homes.

De­vel­op­er de­nies claims

But the lead de­vel­op­er Mahin­dra Boodram, how­ev­er, strong­ly de­nies the claims made by the cor­po­ra­tion and some of the de­vel­op­ment’s res­i­dents.

He said as far as he knows all phas­es of the de­vel­op­ment were built with the nec­es­sary ap­provals.

He claimed, as far as he knows, all the doc­u­ments are au­then­tic. Boodram, how­ev­er, al­leged that he was conned by an em­ploy­ee of the cor­po­ra­tion, and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with that em­ploy­ee.

“Every­thing is in or­der from my end. The build­ing in­spec­tor is the one who is­sued all the com­ple­tions for me for phas­es I and II. They said I have fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments, but the Fraud Squad nev­er con­tact­ed me. The cor­po­ra­tion nev­er con­tact­ed me and the res­i­dents nev­er con­tact­ed me. Why po­lice ain’t come to lock me up if it’s fraud?” he asked.

“These hous­es have been sold for a long time, and when I closed with the bank and the at­tor­ney, all the doc­u­ments went through. Why didn’t they tell me back then I had a fraud­u­lent cer­tifi­cate? Where I could get a com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate? I’m not work­ing at the cor­po­ra­tion. It has three stamps on the com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate. I am not work­ing in the cor­po­ra­tion to get that stamp-to-stamp thing. The peo­ple in­side there are do­ing that. These men are tor­tur­ing you. Too much cor­rup­tion in that cor­po­ra­tion and it will nev­er change”

Mean­while, de­spite not hav­ing drainage ap­proval from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the third phase of the de­vel­op­ment was grant­ed fi­nal ap­proval by the CBC, as seen in doc­u­ments ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the Ch­agua­nas May­or and the CEO, the fi­nal ap­provals—with sig­na­tures and stamps–did not come from the CBC. The cor­po­ra­tion is al­so do­ing an in­ter­nal probe.

“Yes, it’s a false doc­u­ment be­cause we don’t have proof of those doc­u­ments here. It did not orig­i­nate from here, and I can­not say any­thing else be­cause it is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” said Lakhan.

Springfield Gardens in Cunupia.

Phas­es I and II

Some res­i­dents of the de­vel­op­ment are about to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion against Boodram seek­ing the mon­ey they paid for the apart­ments plus dam­ages.

“Some of us don’t have any plans. None of the build­ings could ever get a com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate,” said a spokesman for the res­i­dents. The in­di­vid­ual was too scared to be named.

“The foun­da­tion is two and a half inch­es thick, com­pared to four inch­es. They weld the roof on. There’s a ring con­crete beam around the roof. It needs to be re­placed. It’s too small to sup­port the roof. But the in­ner wall has no con­crete beam to hold the wall and the steel that holds the roof is red brick. Some of us don’t even have foun­da­tion slabs. The fill­ing is red sand. Wa­ter is seep­ing up on both sides. There are cracks in all the build­ings. Every sin­gle one is crack­ing. There is no way in hell we could get our com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate. How are you go­ing to fix the foun­da­tion?” the spokesman added.

Yet, some­how de­spite not hav­ing the req­ui­site ap­provals, the two phas­es of the de­vel­op­ment have fire hy­drants, drains, as well as WASA and T&TEC con­nec­tions.

The Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the de­vel­op­ment last Wednes­day and con­firmed that the con­nec­tions and in­stal­la­tions are present.

The lack of the req­ui­site ap­provals for the de­vel­op­ment was ref­er­enced in CBC in­ter­nal doc­u­ments ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

The doc­u­ment trail

A doc­u­ment trail ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian re­veals the fol­low­ing:

1. Ac­cord­ing to a CBC doc­u­ment, the de­vel­op­er with­drew his ap­pli­ca­tion—ref­er­ence num­ber S-13/17–to de­vel­op 14 plots of land at Lot #1 Road Re­serve, Es­mer­al­da, Cunu­pia, on No­vem­ber 14, 2017. The ap­pli­ca­tion was pre­vi­ous­ly de­ferred by the CBC on Ju­ly 5, 2017.

2. In a CBC doc­u­ment, de­vel­op­er Mahin­dra Boodram’s ap­pli­ca­tion—ref­er­ence num­ber S-07/16–to de­vel­op 14 ad­di­tion­al plots at Plot #2 Jonathon Trace, Es­mer­al­da, Cunu­pia, was de­ferred by the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health.

3. On Oc­to­ber 31, 2022, a CBC act­ing build­ing in­spec­tor (II) sent CEO Lakhan an in­ter­nal memo en­ti­tled ‘Fraud­u­lent Com­ple­tion Cer­tifi­cates For Lots #1K and #1M Road Re­serve Off Jonathon Trace, Cunu­pia, owned by Mahin­dra Boodram.’

4. The memo stat­ed that the is­sue of fraud­u­lent com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates at the de­vel­op­ment was first brought up at the CBC’s Build­ing and Land De­vel­op­ment Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2022 in re­sponse to a let­ter sent by Hob­sons At­tor­ney at Law. “The then Build­ing In­spec­tor re­port­ed that the Com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cate bear­ing reg­is­tra­tion no 42/20 was not au­then­tic. Up­on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the De­vel­op­ment con­sist­ing of 28 res­i­den­tial hous­es owned by Mahin­dra Boodram, it was dis­cov­ered that no ap­provals in the form of Sub­di­vi­sion, Build­ing Plans or Com­ple­tion Cer­tifi­cates were ever is­sued on be­half of the Cor­po­ra­tion and there­fore this was an unau­tho­rised De­vel­op­ment … No Com­ple­tion Cer­tifi­cates could have been is­sued in the Sub­di­vi­sion and three build­ing plans out of the 28 lots hadn’t re­ceived any ap­proval thus far,” the memo stat­ed.

5. Phas­es I and II of the project were ref­er­enced again in an­oth­er in­ter­nal re­port, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, by CBC Act­ing Build­ing In­spec­tor II to the CBC CEO.

6. The memo stat­ed that Phase I should have been re­ferred to the Drainage Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works as it con­sist­ed of ten or more res­i­den­tial lands, and that the CBC fi­nal ap­proval was with­drawn pend­ing the req­ui­site statu­to­ry ap­provals.

Phase III

De­spite the is­sues which plagued Phase 1 and Phase 11 of the de­vel­op­ment, Phase III, which is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion, was grant­ed fi­nal ap­proval by the CBC, ac­cord­ing to a doc­u­ment ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian.

The doc­u­ment shows the pur­port­ed sig­na­tures of CBC chief ex­ec­u­tive Di­anne Lakhan, the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health for Ca­roni, an in­de­pen­dent land sur­vey­or, an en­gi­neer­ing and sur­vey of­fi­cer from the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, and was pur­port­ed­ly stamped by the North Re­gion­al Of­fice of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion.

The sig­na­tures and stamps were dat­ed be­tween the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 9 to Oc­to­ber 22, 2022.

How­ev­er, Lakhan said the doc­u­ment was fake.

* Ac­cord­ing to a CBC doc­u­ment en­ti­tled ‘List of Plans Ap­proved, De­ferred and Pend­ing Ap­proval,’ two Spring­field Gar­dens de­vel­op­ers had ap­provals for 12 lots, from Phase III, ap­proved on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022.

The doc­u­ment list­ed CBC ref­er­ence num­bers, the name of the ap­pli­cants, the lot num­bers, the lo­ca­tion and the type of build­ing ap­proval was sought.

In cor­re­spon­dence, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2022, from a CBC Act­ing Build­ing In­spec­tor II to the CBC CEO, the build­ing in­spec­tor wrote that coun­cil (Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture Com­mit­tee) ask­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in Oc­to­ber 2022 to de­ter­mine if due dili­gence was ex­er­cised in rec­om­mend­ing a sub­di­vi­sion ref­er­ence and the 12 build­ing plans on Au­gust 4 and Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022, re­spec­tive­ly.

“I was di­rect­ed by coun­cil to in­ves­ti­gate to de­ter­mine if my pre­de­ces­sor had done due dili­gence be­fore he made the rec­om­men­da­tion for coun­cil’s ap­proval. A site vis­it was con­duct­ed by em­ploy­ees of the Build­ing In­spec­tors De­part­ment and my­self, on Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, to the site in ques­tion which was sit­u­at­ed at Road Re­serve off Jonathon Trace, Cunu­pia.

“There it was dis­cov­ered that the de­vel­op­ment rec­om­mend­ed by the then Build­ing In­spec­tor (per­son named) and the En­gi­neer­ing and Sur­vey­ing Of­fi­cer had a drainage sys­tem that was flow­ing in­to a de­vel­op­ment oblique­ly op­po­site con­sist­ing of 28 new­ly con­struct­ed res­i­den­tial homes. It was al­so not­ed on the site vis­it that the de­vel­op­ment rec­om­mend­ed by both the for­mer Build­ing In­spec­tor and ESO—con­sist­ing of 17 res­i­den­tial lots—was bound­ed by the Lecriche Riv­er… How­ev­er, the req­ui­site drainage ap­provals were nev­er sought by both,” the let­ter to the CEO read.

* In an­oth­er in­ter­nal doc­u­ment, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, from a CBC act­ing build­ing in­spec­tor II to the CBC CEO, the in­spec­tor flagged more con­cerns about the ap­proval.

“Com­prised of sev­en­teen res­i­den­tial lots CBC Ref# S-60/20 which was grant­ed De­vel­op­ment Fi­nal Ap­proval with­out the req­ui­site Min­istry of Works Drainage ap­proval be­ing ob­tained by the de­vel­op­er. It was al­so not­ed that 11 lots out of the 17 lots were di­rect­ly bound­ed against the Lecriche Riv­er which is owned and main­tained by the Min­istry of Works Drainage Di­vi­sion.

“Should the de­vel­op­er refuse to ob­tain the req­ui­site drainage Ap­provals for these phas­es, es­pe­cial­ly Phase III, then the coun­cil should seek le­gal ad­vice to de­ter­mine if the pre­vi­ous fi­nal ap­provals can be re­scind­ed … I am al­so rec­om­mend­ing that the CEO sum­mon the for­mer Build­ing In­spec­tor II (Ag) to ex­plain why Min­istry of Works Drainage ap­proval was over­looked for Phas­es I and III, but not Phase II … The mat­ter if left un­abat­ed has the po­ten­tial to cast as­per­sions on the process used by the cor­po­ra­tion,” the in­ter­nal doc­u­ment read in part.

On Jan­u­ary 31, 2023, the res­i­dents of Spring­field Gar­dens were in­vit­ed to a CBC Coun­cil meet­ing in which they were told by Lakhan and May­or Mo­hammed that the fi­nal ap­proval doc­u­ments pur­port­ed to have come from the CBC were not in the records. Both of­fi­cials told the res­i­dents they were con­fused as to how the doc­u­ment with sig­na­tures and the cor­po­ra­tion lo­go ex­ist­ed with­out be­ing in their records.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that more than ten res­i­dents are about to take le­gal ac­tion against the de­vel­op­ers for mon­ey back and dam­ages.

They have re­tained at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen to fight their mat­ter.