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Feb 02, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Mr. Khamraj Lall had (or has) a private hangar at the Timehri airport. But if you are in the outer perimeter inside the physical environment of the airport, you have to look hard to see it. You get a better view of Lall’s thing if you go to Timehri South and stand on Kali Street (residents call it the old GAC road).
I did just that on Saturday afternoon. Lall, in case you don’t know, is the gentleman who was arrested in Puerto Rico just before takeoff to Guyana. He was found with money stashed inside his private plane. Since then, investigations by the American authorities have revealed that Lall doesn’t only stash money in his plane but in several banks. And he did it in ways that sought to get around anti-money laundering laws.
Lall is swimming in pouring lava. The Americans are seizing his properties. Will they move on the hangar on Kali Street? If they do, who is going to buy it? Last Saturday, I went to talk with the folks of South Timehri who have received demolition notices from the Government to make way for a luxury hotel (who will patronize this Pablo Escobar type villa)?
I saw Lall’s private hangar. The face of this edifice tells a tragic tale of corruption in this country. A small road leads from the hangar to a huge gate that brings you out on Kali Street. The gate is made of imported chrome bars with floral designs. Next to it sits a large security outpost that is more elegant than any security hut I have seen in Guyana, including the ones at the foreign missions.
It is not hard to imagine what Lall did. After deplaning at Timehri, Lall parked in the hangar, then, drove out on the usually deserted Kali Street. The employees of the airport and the thousands of people going about their business at the airport never saw Lall driving out, so they couldn’t see what was in his car. Lall used Kali Street to get out of Timehri. Likewise, Lall entered his hangar from Kali Street.
From his private hangar to his arrest in Puerto Rico, Lall seems to be engaged at the observational level in the movement of money and it involves Guyana. If you were to be asked who Lall’s intimates are in Guyana, the answer must lie in the direction of powerful politicians. How did Lall get permission to land a plane, bypass Customs, Immigration and security supervision and use an invisible, private entrance/exit? Who gave Lall permission to construct the only private entrance/exit on the airport compound on Kali Street?
Guyanese get annoyed with the Americans for not pouncing on the known drug traffickers and money launderers in this land and that anger will expand when you see Lall’s operations as you stand on Kali Street in the south of Timehri. The DEA had to have asked the Guyanese authorities about that private hangar and the Kali Street gate.
One explanation is that the Americans don’t have the proof in Guyana so they wait until the culprits are on foreign soil then they make their move. It would appear that Lall fell into this pattern.
The story of Lall at Timehri cries out for investigation and until that comes, commonsense should guide us into accepting that in Guyana we have what our leading scholar, Clive Thomas calls, a criminalized state.
It was time to speak to the residents of Kali Street that the Ministry of Public Works wants to remove. Most people in the world know that it is not what you say to people but how you say it. The infamous Bruk-Up Minister went to the people and the insults rained down on them.
One resident told us, he said, “Y’all know people who is live next to an airport; dat is dangerous.” The gentleman knew fully well that Mr. Bruk-Up was talking nonsense. An old lady in her nineties told us she was living there for over thirty years. In an emotional address directly to me, she stared at me and said she remembered the old days when she lined up for soap during the Burnham era and a guard pushed the entire queue down to the ground. She then said, “Look wuh deh trying fuh do to me in meh old age.”
Another dweller told us the Bruk-Up Minister yelled out, “Wuh baad road y’all talking bout? De road where I live worse than this.” The Bruk-Up man was lying through his teeth and those poor dwellers who live opposite Mr. Lall’s private hangar on Kali Street knew it.
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