Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 10, 2018 News
–overseas-based Guyanese asks
He is 70 years old and still working at a major airport in New York. Like many Guyanese, he too owns or maintains family properties here.
It was supposed to serve as a getaway in his retirement.
However, for Victor Sukhai, his property seems to be no more his. He claims it has been sold illegally without his knowledge.
Since 2009, it passed from a number of hands, including the nephew of former President Bharrat Jagdeo. It is now deemed to be owned by a radio station reportedly belonging to Ansa McAl, a Trinidadian company.
Sukhai is contemplating his legal options, in a battle to take back a property that was bequeathed to him by his mother in her will.
Sukhai’s case would be but one of many property cases said to be involving fraud with deeds and other property documents.
There have been an increasing number of complaints filed about property frauds involving personnel from the courts, staff from the Registry and officials of the legal fraternity.
For the victims, finding resolutions can take years because of a muddled court system.
Many of the victims live abroad and sometimes only discover years later that their properties were sold, sometimes by real estate companies, and at other times by fraudsters.
According to Sukhai, his mother, Etwarie Sukhai, in her Last Will and Testament on September 17, 1976, left him the property at 30 Garnett Street, Campbellville.
The will left $25 for the older brother, Kissoon Lall, with the second son, Bholan Nauth Sukhai, to receive $2,000. The rest of the estate was left to Sukhai, the third son.
On June 10, 1977, the mother died and less than a year later, on April 10, 1978, the property was transferred via a Transport into Sukhai’s name.
According to Sukhai, he left his sister in the home and went abroad to live.
The airport worker said that in September, he visited a lawyer, Vrinda Jagan, in New York where he instructed her to prepare an Irrevocable Power of Attorney in the name of Parmanand Maraj. Maraj is Sukhai’s nephew-in-law.
Maraj, via the document, was authorized to conduct business pertaining to the Garnett Street property.
However, Maraj claimed he was threatened when he went there by persons in the home.
On the land, Maraj saw a massive radio tower.
Maraj was told that the land now belonged to the owners of the radio station- known as IRadio. That radio had linkages to former Natural Resources Minister, Robert Persaud, whose wife Kamini Persaud, was one of the directors.
IRadio had its office on the western side of the Garnett Street property, on Seaforth Street.
It built the station there and then constructed the tower on the lands that Sukhai said that he owns.
How the property ended up in hands of IRadio, now sold to Ansa McAl, is what the US-based Guyanese man wants to know.
According to documents pertaining to the property, filed at the courts, a man named Kissoon Lall, sold the property to one Diaram Ojha, of 28 Garnett Street, in 2009.
Kissoon Lall has the same name as the eldest brother of Sukhai who was left $25 by his late mother in a will.
In June 2013, Diaram Ojha resold the property to one Ryan Dev Basdeo, of Railway Embankment, Cummings Lodge for $5M. Basdeo is said to be the nephew of former President Bharrat Jagdeo.
The former president was the one who a few weeks before he ended his second term in office in November 2011, controversially approved several radio licences to close family and friends and members of the People’s Progressive Party.
Among those licences was the one to IRadio.
Shortly after the Coalition Government entered office in May 2015, Jagdeo’s nephew flipped the property to IRadio Incorporated for a healthy $32.2M.
“I don’t understand what documents were used to sell this land. I don’t know who gave permission for a radio tower to be erected on my property. I saw some documents with what appears to be a Transport. It is clear fraud to me and I will be pursuing my legal options with my lawyers,” the New York-based man said.
IRadio itself was owned by Telecor & Cultural Broadcasting Inc, which received the licence for the radio frequencies, including 90.1 and 91.5FM.
Telecor’s Company Secretary then was listed as Omar Lochan, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources.
Both the former minister Robert Persaud’s wife, Kamini Persaud, and his sister Ruth Baljit, were said to be on the radio station management.
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