Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 28, 2016 News
…Eddie Boyer bought at $5M an acre
Business is going well for National Hardware. The company has been raking in huge profits off of lands it secured as a result of the generosity of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) and Bharrat Jagdeo.
NICIL, back in 2010, sold National Hardware 103.88 acres for $510M (US2.55M)—$4.9M per acre. National Hardware, owned by Eddie Boyer, has in turn been selling the lands at $80M per acre.
Kaieteur News spoke to two of the buyers yesterday who indicated that they were made to pay $20M per quarter of an acre. Those purchasers secured their lands back in 2013. Some potential buyers now say that the price has gone up since then.
One of the persons who spoke to this newspaper said, “I have been told that the price increased since then. A friend of mine was looking to buy a piece but I am not sure if he went through with it because he told me the price was higher.”
Some buyers took lands in blocks, buying as many as five acres. Dr. Ranjisinghi ‘Bobby’ Ramroop owns a few acres as does another popular entrepreneur. Those two, if they indeed bought the land, would be the biggest buyers so far.
Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) was the original owner of the land. The sugar company could have been in a better position if only it was allowed to go ahead with certain plans, said an official. However, those plans were halted on the call of President Bharrat Jagdeo. He had eyed GuySuCo lands for his friends.
A document titled Privatization in Tables Phase 11 (1993 to 2011) shows that those lands were basically gifted to Boyer. Boyer is a friend of Jagdeo.
Page 38 of that document, item 61, showed that Boyer under the name of his company, National Hardware, was sold 103.88 acres for $510M (US2.55M)—$4.9M per acre.
The document showed that other buyers of land in Liliendaal paid way more than Boyer paid.
Scady Business Corp. paid $115M for 4.7 acres — $23M per acre. Even though the circumstances surrounding that sale are questionable, Boyer was essentially handed the lands at a gift price.
The transactions were also flagged in the NICIL audit report done by Chartered Accountant and Former Auditor General, Anand Goolsarran.
Goolsarran, in his report, said that “By order No. 45 of 2008 dated 29 December 2008, 209.344 acres of land at Block LPT lettered XXX were transferred from GuySuCo to the government of Guyana. Of this amount, 103.88 acres were transferred to NICIL via order No. 4/2010 dated 12 March 2010. Three months later, on 17 June 2010, NICIL sold the said land to National Hardware for $510M via order No. 43 of 2010. This works out to 4.9M per acre.
He noted too, “By order No. 47/2008 dated 30 December 2008 4.7 acres of land at RU Plantation Liliendaal was transferred from the Government of Guyana to NICIL. NICIL in turn sold the property on 2 January 2009, a mere two days later, for $115 M to Scady Business Corporation, an overseas company based in Tortola, British Virgin Islands . This is further evidence of the sale of land without any form of competitive bidding.”
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