The EMBDC was set up to manage the 80,000 acres of land that the Caroni (1975) Limited owned owned prior to its closure by the Manning administration.
Bharath told MPs the previous government handed out the contracts in a 90-day period between April 19 and May 29, 2010. The period covers the time when Parliament was dissolved and included five days after the government was voted out of office.
“There may have been a legitimate reason for the award of these contracts...however there appeared to be an indecent haste in awarding those contracts," he said during debate motion to approve a Presidential order for land acquisition.
Bharath also questioned how EMBDC used state lands that were classified as prime arable land. “These were some of the best agricultural lands in Trinidad and Tobago,” Bharath said in reference to the lands that were used for mainly for sugar cane cultivation.
Speaking on the same motion Tabaquite MP and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr Suruj Rambachan said a "ring of corruption" and tiny flaws in the system of land searches have allowed a series of “fraudulent schemes” to take place in relation to land acquisition.
“There are very distinguished legal firms who have presented searches to banks which now they find that those searches were in fact faulty and that is how those deeds get away,” Rambachan told the House.
“I have been hearing within recent times of false deeds in the country, where even banks have found themselves in problems, where they have accepted deeds and used it for mortgages and so on, only to discover that when the person can’t pay and the lands are advertised on the newspaper somebody comes and says, ‘but you are selling my land’ and then the bank says no this land has been mortgaged to us,” the minister said. “There are cases like that.”
“People have a kind of business going on in this country now where it seems the business may also involve maybe some of the regional corporations who have the tax records of the land and they notice people have not come in and paid their land taxes for 16 years or what have you and then they combine with people on the outside,” he said
“And they get into fraudulent schemes where people are dispossessed of their very valuable lands and then the lands are mortgaged to the banks and in the process the banks don’t get paid and then the real owner of the land turns up,” he added.
The minister noted Legal Affairs Minister Prakash Ramadhar is setting up a special unit in the Legal Affairs ministry to investigate deed irregularities.
“He is setting up an investigative unit in his ministry in order to ensure that when people come with deeds you can at that point discover whether fraud has taken place,” Rambachan said.
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