Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

Wealthy busi­ness­man Ains­ley Gill and his wife are now on the radar of T&T Po­lice Ser­vice for al­leged land grab­bing, fraud and col­lu­sion af­ter Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat wrote to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith ear­ly last month about sprawl­ing beach­front prop­er­ty owned by the State at Dami­an Bay the busi­ness­man is now claim­ing as his own af­ter re­mov­ing sev­er­al oc­cu­pants who were liv­ing there for decades and al­leged­ly de­mol­ish­ing their homes.

Gill is the CEO and Di­rec­tor of the Ni­quan En­er­gy Group based in Point-A-Pierre and was a for­mer Wash­ing­ton DC-based lob­by­ist un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion.

A two-week in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the mat­ter was aired ex­clu­sive­ly on Sun­day night on CNC3’s Un­spun, in which it was re­vealed that a bit­ter and con­tentious bat­tle has now emerged be­tween the Gills, the State and at least six oc­cu­pants of the land who are al­so up in arms about Gill’s al­leged strong-arm tac­tics to push them off the land, which is lo­cat­ed along the North Coast Road in Mara­cas.

Some of the af­fect­ed oc­cu­pants in­clude Wayne “Mor­gan” Thomas, Au­gus­tus “Mi­tan” Pierre, Gem­ma Ce­les­tine-Bar­row, Phillip Ro­main, Kurt Ce­les­tine and Ald­wyn Karim­bo­cas, who all con­tend they have been col­lec­tive­ly liv­ing on the Dami­an Bay land for over 150 years.

Wayne Thomas claims that some­time last year, af­ter de­vel­op­ment work start­ed at Dami­an Bay, he was al­leged­ly of­fered $50,000 for his prop­er­ty but re­fused be­cause the land was hand­ed down to him by his grand­fa­ther and was of sen­ti­men­tal val­ue to him­self.

Au­gus­tus Pierre mean­while said sev­er­al of the land oc­cu­pants pooled mon­ey to­geth­er and Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine and Wen­dell Ro­main got a road cut through the un­du­lat­ing ter­rain on the fringes of the Dami­an Bay beach­front so they could ac­cess their hous­es.

“Ains­ley Gill came in here about a year ago and promise to help fix the road and de­vel­op the place and every­body will live there nice. We did not know any bet­ter and we put up the mon­ey and cut the road so we could bring in agri­cul­ture and oth­er goods. Gill came in and start­ed to pur­chase from who­ev­er. We wel­comed him but then when he put up the elec­tron­ic gate and he brought in se­cu­ri­ty, he start­ed to put out peo­ple their place,” Pierre claimed.

How­ev­er, many of the landown­ers start­ed to ques­tion where Gill got the au­thor­i­ty to evict those al­ready liv­ing there, de­mol­ish their homes and lat­er pave a road and name it An­vaya Lane.

Dur­ing CNC3’s Un­spun in­ves­ti­ga­tion, doc­u­ments were ob­tained which show that Gill bought 11.75 acres of the land from Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine and his plan was to build an eco-park in the area.

When Gill se­cured the sale of the land last Sep­tem­ber, his wife Trudy Gill sent let­ters bear­ing no let­ter­heads or any le­gal un­der­tak­ing in which she in­di­cat­ed to the land oc­cu­pants that they had to va­cate the land or com­ply with the rules set down. The let­ter said a pri­vate road was paved and ac­cess would on­ly be through an elec­tron­ic gate that the Gills con­struct­ed and on­ly lim­it­ed per­sons would be al­lowed ac­cess in their pri­vate ve­hi­cles. The Gills con­tend­ed that when they bought the land from Con­stan­tine, the chat­tel build­ings, to­geth­er with all rights and ti­tle es­tate and in­ter­est in lands, com­pris­ing 11.75 acres.

How­ev­er, checks dur­ing the Un­spun in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that Dami­an Bay was state land un­der the State Lands Act. This meant that Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine did not have any right­ful own­er­ship of the land to be able to sell it in the first place.

Se­nior sources at the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries con­firmed that Con­stan­tine had no le­git­i­mate doc­u­men­ta­tion for the land.

Con­stan­tine was con­tact­ed via What­sApp and phone more than a week ago about the land sale and if he had any le­git­i­mate doc­u­ments to prove the land was his. He read the What­sApp mes­sages, as in­di­cat­ed by a blue tick, but did not re­spond.

De­spite this, the sale of the land went ahead on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2020 and the Gills sub­mit­ted, as part of a dossier to Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Bhaman­ti Seecha­ran, a sale agree­ment with Con­stan­tine for the pur­chase of the 11.75 acres. They al­so showed sale agree­ments for pur­chas­ing a build­ing near the beach­front from Joseph Ar­nasalam for $1 mil­lion and in Au­gust last year, a two lev­el-house from An­tho­ny and Michelle Con­stan­tine for $400,000.

What was of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in Con­stan­tine’s sale agree­ment was a note which read: “The chat­tel build­ing and the lands oc­cu­pied by the ven­dor is owned by the state.”

On No­vem­ber 20, 2020, Trudy Gill wrote to the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands in­di­cat­ing she had pur­chased the 11.75 acres in Dami­an Bay for the de­vel­op­ment of an eco-park and was seek­ing a 99-year-lease.

Five days lat­er, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands re­spond­ed stat­ing, “The mat­ter was for­ward­ed to the rel­e­vant unit for in­ves­ti­ga­tion and you will be no­ti­fied of our find­ings.”

But af­ter these pur­chas­es, things took a turn for some of the oth­er oc­cu­pants like Thomas, Pierre, Ce­les­tine-Bar­row and Kurt Ce­les­tine.

Thomas claimed in ear­ly March he got a dev­as­tat­ing phone call.

“I got a call that my house was de­mol­ished and car­ried away. No­body ever called me about this and what was tak­ing place on my prop­er­ty - is a po­lice se­cu­ri­ty guard and you are be­ing bul­lied. They took every­thing from my house. I do not know where it went,” lament­ed Thomas.

Pierre al­so claimed he had a life-threat­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“They came to sur­vey by me and I start­ed act­ing up and I asked who au­tho­rise this and I saw no doc­u­ments to war­rant this and they said it came from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. I said I was not no­ti­fied. I start­ed get­ting on and grab up two bot­tles, to be hon­est. They call se­cu­ri­ty and they sub­due me and one of the of­fi­cers says he could shoot me be­cause I have a weapon and they start­ed to rough me up and sub­dued me for the sur­vey­ing to go on,” Pierre claimed.

Gem­ma Ce­les­tine-Bar­row al­so claimed the pos­ses­sions in her house were re­moved sev­er­al weeks ago and she was nev­er al­lowed back on­to her land. She said the po­lice re­ports she made to the Mara­cas Bay Po­lice Sta­tion were al­so in vain, as no ac­tion was tak­en even when she tried to get back on­to the land with the po­lice.

Bar­row claimed Gill kept telling her to get off the land, in­di­cat­ing he had pur­chased it and he was will­ing to give her “$25,000 for the pain of it all.”

Ce­les­tine-Bar­row’s grand­daugh­ter, Monique Fournil­li­er, chal­lenged Gill’s claim and re­spond­ed to his text, telling him he need­ed to show a deed or a deed of com­fort for the land. Gill nev­er did.

“He texts say­ing I have to leave the land and it is now his and I have to va­cate. He told me to talk to the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and he is putting up a gate and my on­ly ac­cess is through him. I had no ac­cess to my prop­er­ty and I had to go to the po­lice,” Ce­les­tine-Bar­row told Un­spun as she broke down in tears.

Ald­wyn Carim­bo­cas said he has been liv­ing on the land near Dami­an Bay since the 1970s and all he wants is to be treat­ed fair­ly.

“I would like for them to re­move the gate so we can have ac­cess. We have to walk with our fish and ice. They stop us from dri­ving on the beach be­cause of the tur­tles. I used to have ac­cess through that road with my van and reach close to my home but now I can­not do that,” Carim­bo­cas said.

Up­set with the sit­u­a­tion, Carim­bo­cas’s daugh­ter penned a let­ter to Min­is­ter Ramb­harat in De­cem­ber last year out­lin­ing the sit­u­a­tion they faced.

Ramb­harat told Un­spun that he vis­it­ed Dami­an Bay in Oc­to­ber 2020 and re­quest­ed the Di­rec­tor of Sur­veys to con­duct oc­cu­pan­cy sur­veys on the site and said he lat­er re­ceived let­ters from per­sons claim­ing to be af­fect­ed by the Gills’ de­vel­op­ment.

Ramb­harat said he met with the Gills in Jan­u­ary 2021 and re­ceived a bun­dle of doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to Trudy Gill’s “ac­qui­si­tion” of state lands at Dami­an Bay. Ramb­harat said he al­so spoke to the af­fect­ed oc­cu­pants on the same day.

Ramb­harat said,”I spoke to the lawyer for Trudy Gill that night and the next day wrote to him chal­leng­ing the doc­u­ments that he pre­pared for Trudy Gill which she was us­ing to claim own­er­ship of the state land.”

The Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion, which is un­der Ramb­harat’s min­istry, al­so com­plet­ed a re­port on the mat­ter on Jan­u­ary 29 this year that was al­so ob­tained dur­ing Un­spun’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion. One of the things high­light­ed in the re­port was that the “Gills were con­struct­ing a re­tain­ing wall along the coast­line us­ing con­crete and met­al piles. Up­on fur­ther in­quiry, it was re­vealed that they do not pos­sess the nec­es­sary statu­to­ry ap­provals for the con­struc­tion of the same.” They were told to seek the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion.

The re­port al­so sug­gest­ed “that rel­e­vant no­tices should be served ac­cord­ing­ly, fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion should be car­ried out on the sea­wall be­ing con­struct­ed, and nec­es­sary ac­tion be tak­en ac­cord­ing to state land pol­i­cy and whether or not any con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to the Gills’ ap­pli­ca­tion for the par­cel of lands.”

In Feb­ru­ary, Ramb­harat sought clar­i­ty on what had been hap­pen­ing with the mat­ter. In the cor­re­spon­dence, which Un­spun ob­tained, it was clear that Dami­an Bay was state land since 1943 and re­mains so to date. Se­nior sources in­side the Land Set­tle­ment Di­vi­sion told Un­spun that based on the ev­i­dence they un­cov­ered, Dami­an Bay be­longed to the state and no one had any le­git­i­mate claim to sell the land.

On March 10, the Com­mis­sion­er of State Land sent out a no­tice to Gill and sev­er­al of the oth­er oc­cu­pants of the land at Dami­an Bay. The let­ter stat­ed that in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that "you have un­law­ful­ly tres­passed on­to this par­cel of state land at Dami­an Bay, North Coast Road, Mara­cas Bay, with­out any prob­a­ble claim or pre­tence of ti­tle.”

The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands said in the ab­sence of prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion for own­er­ship of the land, le­gal ac­tion could be tak­en against all par­ties.

While the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands was in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter, how­ev­er, Ramb­har­rat wrote to the Gills’ lawyer Zalil Shamshudeen. In that let­ter, al­so ob­tained by Un­spun, Ramb­harat ad­dressed the con­cerns of the af­fect­ed oc­cu­pants about the se­cu­ri­ty gate in­stalled that pre­vent­ed them from get­ting to their hous­es.

In the let­ter he said, "To that ex­tent, they be­lieve that this could amount to an act of tres­pass and fraud in so far that your clients, through doc­u­ments you have pre­pared and up­on which they re­ly, are ex­ert­ing rights which they do not pos­sess and are al­so deny­ing the af­fect­ed res­i­dents rights which they may eas­i­ly es­tab­lish.”

He added, "The fact that the doc­u­ments pre­pared by you Shamshud­den and Co and styled as chat­tel sale agree­ments are in­sep­a­ra­ble from a prac­ti­cal and le­gal sense from the land up­on which these chat­tels sit, and to the ex­tent that those doc­u­ments re­fer to, deal with and pur­port to add cre­dence to the claim of land own­er­ship now be­ing re­lied up­on by the Gills, these af­fect­ed per­sons be­lieve that those doc­u­ments and the in­struc­tions giv­en for their prepa­ra­tion may con­sti­tute fraud.”

The min­is­ter made it clear in his let­ter to the Gills’ lawyer that he was re­fer­ring the mat­ter to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

On March 8, Ramb­har­rat wrote a six-page let­ter to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns about this mat­ter, adding that “al­though most of the doc­u­ments bear the name Trudy Gill - he con­sid­ered Mr Ains­ley Gill to be the prime mover of these trans­ac­tions."

Ramb­har­rat in­di­cat­ed that the sale of the chat­tel to two of the for­mer own­ers was not be­ing con­test­ed but rather the sale agree­ment be­tween Trudy Gill and Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine by sev­er­al of the af­fect­ed oc­cu­pants whom he not­ed had like­ly mer­it to their claims.

Ramb­har­rat re­vealed in the let­ter that his checks at the Land Set­tle­ment Agency (LSA) re­vealed that the file num­ber 10/10/3f/016/502, as ref­er­enced in the let­ter by Trudy Gill in No­vem­ber 2020, was not an LSA ref­er­ence num­ber and the LSA was cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing Con­stan­tine to see if he had ever ap­plied for a cer­tifi­cate of com­fort.

Mak­ing di­rect ref­er­ence to Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine, the min­is­ter said: “To sell what he does not own is in ques­tion. The de­scrip­tion of Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine as ex­ecu­tor of the es­tate of his grand­fa­ther is to be proven, along with the as­sets of that es­tate. This mat­ter rais­es the spec­tre of fraud and col­lu­sion.”

Ramb­harat told the com­mis­sion­er: “I re­it­er­ate that this mat­ter rais­es the spec­tre of fraud and col­lu­sion and the pos­si­ble act of land grab­bing in the Dami­an's Bay Mara­cas area. It rais­es the prospect of bul­ly­ing res­i­dents, whose claims I view with mer­it, by per­sons who ap­pear to have wealth, pow­er and in­flu­ence.”

Ramb­harat, in clos­ing, said it was not a nor­mal prac­tice for him to get in­volved in a state land mat­ter like this but he not­ed he was drawn to the mat­ter due to the pleas of the cit­i­zens and the fact that sev­er­al of the statu­to­ry bod­ies ap­pear not to have act­ed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Gill’s lawyer Zalil Shamshudeen for com­ment on his law firm be­ing ac­cused of fraud.

Shamshudeen said, “The au­thor of the let­ter should check the de­f­i­n­i­tion of fraud and the con­text of how it was used.”

Ains­ley Gill did not want to speak to Un­spun via tele­phone or on cam­era about the al­le­ga­tions but in­stead de­cid­ed to re­spond to our email ques­tions sent about a week and a half ago. He de­nied al­le­ga­tions of bul­ly­ing and in­tim­i­da­tion by the oth­er oc­cu­pants. He did not ad­dress specif­i­cal­ly al­le­ga­tions that he had re­moved pos­ses­sions from any home­made any di­rect state­ment about his ac­tions con­cern­ing oth­er oc­cu­pants but re­spond­ed in gen­er­al to the al­le­ga­tions made by the oth­er oc­cu­pants.

Gill said, "We have not bul­lied or in­tim­i­dat­ed any oc­cu­pants. In re­sponse to both items, the an­swer is cat­e­gor­i­cal that se­cu­ri­ty does not bul­ly oc­cu­pants, nor do they car­ry au­to­mat­ic weapons. What I be­lieve you would have seen is a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer with his pis­tol in a mi­cro sta­bilis­er Roni kit. This Roni kit ac­cepts pis­tols and is de­signed to pro­vide added util­i­ty and at­tach­ing it to your pis­tol is per­fect­ly le­gal, and your pis­tol does not make it in­to an au­to­mat­ic weapon.”

De­spite the fact that Gill's se­cu­ri­ty signed for re­ceiv­ing the no­tice is­sued by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands to va­cate the premis­es for tres­pass­ing, Gill said, ”The let­ter you re­fer to March 10th is not ad­dressed to me or my wife Trudy Gill."

The let­ter Un­spun learnt was sent to all rel­e­vant oc­cu­pants on the land, but not by name.

Was Mr Gill aware that Sabi­nus Con­stan­tine did not own the land in Dami­an Bay that he bought and it was in fact bona fide state land?

He re­spond­ed: “We agree that no one has the au­thor­i­ty to sell state lands, save and ex­cept the state. Note, we did not pur­chase any state land from Mr Dario (Sabi­nus) Con­stan­tine. What we pur­chased, fur­ther to le­gal ad­vice, from Mr Con­stan­tine was his chat­tel build­ings to­geth­er with all rights, ti­tle, es­tate and in­ter­est he may have.”

Of­fi­cials at the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion mean­while said Gill may own the chat­tel build­ing - but the land re­mained the state.

Gill was asked to re­spond to the al­leged il­le­gal re­tain­ing wall he was con­struct­ing along the beach­front at a cost of $1.4 mil­lion that the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion re­port said they had no statu­to­ry ap­proval to build.

He claimed, "I am not aware of the re­port to which you re­fer nor were there any no­tice served ac­cord­ing­ly. Up­on ac­qui­si­tion of the chat­tel build­ings, and the rights as we have in­di­cat­ed ear­li­er, we en­gaged a con­trac­tor to ad­dress land ero­sion and slip­page in­to the sea. Com­ing out of that en­gi­neer­ing ex­er­cise, a Span­cast-en­gi­neered wall was erect­ed per code. That be­ing said, the re­tain­ing wall is now com­plete and is now pre­vent­ing land slip­page in­to the sea.”

Gill was ques­tioned about whether he had plans to com­pen­sate oth­er land oc­cu­pants and al­low them back on­to the lands. His re­sponse was: “We do not have any au­thor­i­ty to give ac­cess or move any­one off of state lands. The au­thor­i­ty to do so is the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and I be­lieve this ques­tion should be ad­dressed to that of­fice.”

But based on the ev­i­dence pro­vid­ed by oth­er land oc­cu­pants, Gill had sought to de­ny many of them ac­cess to the land and their homes.

Gill, how­ev­er, did ac­knowl­edge the let­ter sent to his lawyer by Min­is­ter Ramb­harat about a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion that may con­sti­tute fraud. While ad­mit­ting he had no claim to the state land, he chas­tised the min­is­ter for de­fend­ing peo­ple like Gem­ma Bar­row and Kurt Ce­les­tine who al­so had no claim to the state land, “and then fur­ther us­es this ba­sis to ac­cuse my lawyer that his ad­vice may con­sti­tute fraud.”

Gill claimed he had done every­thing above board and with trans­paren­cy and claimed they im­proved the qual­i­ty of life in Dami­an Bay for the res­i­dents there.

Gill shot back at Ramb­harat, say­ing he was at­tempt­ing to pre-empt the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the statu­to­ry bod­ies and warned the min­is­ter to thread care­ful­ly.

"The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries’ ef­forts al­so at­tempts to pass le­gal judg­ment on our learned lawyer, de­fame Mrs Gill, a very kind and en­dear­ing per­son and my­self, a busi­nessper­son and own­er of an en­er­gy com­pa­ny, as per­sons with il­le­gal or ma­li­cious in­tent. These is­sues we take very se­ri­ous­ly and we kind­ly ask the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries to re­frain from such ac­tion.”

Gill al­so claimed some­one at­tempt­ed to burn down the house he bought from Joseph Ar­nasalam last week.

Un­spun vis­it­ed the area last Thurs­day and spoke briefly with Gill, who said the mat­ter was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by po­lice. We pressed Gill on whether he would leave the state land and break down the elec­tron­ic gate if the state said he had to.

"I have no is­sue with that, then I will have to leave," he said throw­ing his hands in the air.