Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The mil­lion-dol­lar sale of the of­fi­cial Chief Jus­tice res­i­dence more than a decade ago has come back to haunt the State. The de­ci­sion has left tax­pay­ers dig­ging deep in­to their pock­ets fork­ing out more than $54,000 a month to af­ford the su­per-grade hous­ing a Chief Jus­tice is en­ti­tled to. So, why was the home of the na­tion's third high­est of­fice hold­er sold and not ren­o­vat­ed? This is the burn­ing unan­swered ques­tion on the lips of many. Com­pris­ing 44,943 square feet of land (more than one acre) and lo­cat­ed in the af­flu­ent neigh­bour­hood of St Clair, the sprawl­ing prop­er­ty was auc­tioned off for a bid of $7,001,000 just three days be­fore Christ­mas in 1997. Re­al es­tate agent and char­tered sur­vey­or Afra Ray­mond val­ued the op­u­lent prop­er­ty in to­day's mar­ket at a whop­ping $31 mil­lion.

"A piece of land that size would be sold for a lit­tle more than $700 per square foot. In to­day's mar­ket it would worth an es­ti­mat­ed $31.5 mil­lion. That piece of land in St Clair is a de­sir­able en­clave. That size of lot in a mil­lion­aire's row. It is re­al­ly a de­sir­able spot," Ray­mond told Sun­day Guardian when con­tact­ed.

The sprawl­ing prop­er­ty was snatched off the mar­ket with­in min­utes by the for­mer chair­man of the TSTT, Richard Azar, who topped the $7 mil­lion bid from Al­brosco Meats Pack­ag­ing boss, Christo­pher Ale­ong. Sur­round­ed by lush green­ery, the two-storey build­ing com­prised four-bed­rooms, three bath­rooms and a din­ing and tele­vi­sion room. Lo­cat­ed on the sec­ond floor of the house was a liv­ing/sit­ting room and kitchen. The prop­er­ty al­so in­clud­ed liv­ing quar­ters for a maid and gar­den­er. The sale cre­at­ed his­to­ry in T&T be­com­ing one of the high­est bids ever of­fered for a state-owned prop­er­ty. It was then Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Wade Mark, a mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Cab­i­net who sanc­tioned the move fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion to dis­pose of all gov­ern­ment res­i­dences with the ex­cep­tion of the homes - Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Mark, who is now House Speak­er, re­fused to com­ment on the mat­ter on­ly say­ing it was a de­ci­sion made by the then ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Shock­waves over the sale of the CJ's house

The move to sell the state-owned man­sion sent shock­waves through the po­lit­i­cal and le­gal fra­ter­ni­ties lead­ing to a failed at­tempt by the for­mer Chief Jus­tice Michael de la Bastide to block the sale. Thir­teen years ago, de la Bastide, who is now Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ), ex­pressed shock over the de­ci­sion af­ter learn­ing of the pro­posed sale in a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment. The for­mer Chief Jus­tice who opt­ed not to oc­cu­py the prop­er­ty, ini­tial­ly had no ob­jec­tion to the sale of the man­sion, ac­cord­ing to Guardian re­ports at the time. How­ev­er, de la Bastide had a change of heart and be­lieved the man­sion should have been ren­o­vat­ed and kept for his suc­ces­sor. Let­ters were sent by de la Bastide to the for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and the at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj crit­i­cal of the sale.vFour days be­fore the man­sion was sold, in a let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 18, 1997 to the for­mer prime min­is­ter, de la Bastide stat­ed: "As far as I am aware, my ef­forts have not been suc­cess­ful, and the sale will take place as sched­uled de­spite my own wish­es and those of my fel­low judges. It is a fact that un­til quite re­cent­ly, I did not in­tend to oc­cu­py the of­fi­cial res­i­dence be­cause it would re­quire con­sid­er­able ex­pense to bring the prop­er­ty back to ac­cept­able con­di­tion, and in any event, my fam­i­ly and I were quite com­fort­able in our own home."

Giv­ing rea­sons for his change of mind, the for­mer Chief Jus­tice fur­ther stat­ed: "First­ly I re­alised that it would be un­fair to those who suc­ceed me as Chief Jus­tice to de­ny them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to oc­cu­py an of­fi­cial res­i­dence, con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed, suit­able for their needs and ap­pro­pri­ate to their of­fice. Sec­ond­ly, I have come to ap­pre­ci­ate that it is im­por­tant for the main­te­nance of the sta­tus of his of­fice that the Chief Jus­tice should oc­cu­py a suit­able res­i­dence." De la Bastide sent an ear­li­er let­ter, dat­ed No­vem­ber 12, 1997, to the then pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter, Wade Mark, whose min­istry was re­spon­si­ble for gov­ern­ment hous­ing seek­ing to stop the sale. All his at­tempts failed, how­ev­er. In­stead, Mark said the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion had tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­place gov­ern­ment hous­ing with an al­lowance for the Chief Jus­tice and judges. Ef­fec­tive April 1, 1997, it was agreed that the Chief Jus­tice would be en­ti­tled to a hous­ing al­lowance of $7,500 while judges would re­ceive $5,000. Since its im­ple­men­ta­tion, the al­lowance has in­creased over the years with the Chief Jus­tice now re­ceiv­ing a month­ly al­lowance of $15,400. When Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed de la Bastide's Hale­land Park res­i­dence yes­ter­day, the CCJ head re­frained from com­ment­ing, on­ly say­ing: "I do not wish to get in­volved in any po­lit­i­cal foe."

Tax­pay­ers to bear hefty hous­ing al­lowances

The de­ci­sion to sell the St Clair man­sion in 1997 has placed a bur­den on the pock­ets of tax­pay­ers and con­tin­ues to cause con­tro­ver­sy. In his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate, Min­is­ter of Jus­tice Her­bert Vol­ney al­leged there was a "sweet­heart deal" in­volv­ing the rent­ing of a two-storey home at Sandown Road, Good­wood Park, in which the cur­rent Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie lives. Vol­ney's state­ments have caused a furore in many cir­cles, with the Min­is­ter be­ing round­ly con­demned. There have been calls for him to apol­o­gise or re­sign from Cab­i­net be­ing made from as far as Ja­maica. The Ju­di­cia­ry is­sued a state­ment call­ing Vol­ney's con­tri­bu­tion "scur­rilous," "defam­a­to­ry," "reck­less" and "bla­tant un­truths and high­ly of­fen­sive in­nu­en­dos." Oth­ers have ques­tioned what "sweet­heart deal" the min­is­ter was re­fer­ring to when he made the com­ments.

A Sun­day Guardian in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed that a Cab­i­net Note dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008, dis­closed that the State agreed to pay one Ruthven Smith a rental rate of US$8,500 per month ($54,400) for a man­sion in Good­wood Park for the max­i­mum term of three years.

The Cab­i­net Note stat­ed: "Cab­i­net by Minute No 2667 of Sep­tem­ber, 2008, agreed in­ter alia:

(1) In prin­ci­ple, to the lease by the Ju­di­cia­ry of the pri­vate res­i­dence sit­u­at­ed at No 40 Sandown Road, Good­wood Park, for use by the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice as rent-free, su­per-grade hous­ing and

(2) That the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion sub­mit for the con­sid­er­a­tion of Cab­i­net de­tails of the lease of the prop­er­ty re­ferred to at (I) above. Cab­i­net had al­so, vide the said Minute, ac­cept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion of The Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice that the rental of the said premis­es be for a pe­ri­od of two years with an op­tion to re­new for an ad­di­tion­al pe­ri­od of one year dur­ing which time al­ter­na­tive premis­es owned by the State shall be iden­ti­fied and put in­to su­per-grade con­di­tion in or­der to serve as ac­com­mo­da­tion for the Chief Jus­tice."

The five-bed­room, se­mi-fur­nished house in­cludes en-suites bath­rooms and walk-in clos­ets, kitchen, din­ning room, for­mal liv­ing room, two sit­ting rooms, pantry, pow­der room, maid quar­ters, util­i­ty room and two car garages. The premis­es al­so in­clude a gaze­bo with built in bar, an open stor­age room and a swim­ming pool.

Min­istry queries ten per cent in­crease in CJ rental

How­ev­er, the lease dat­ed May 13, 2009 be­tween Smith, own­er of the prop­er­ty, and His Ex­cel­len­cy George Maxwell Richards and ex­e­cut­ed by at­tor­ney An­drew John­son refers to an agree­ment of $54,400 a month for two years ($1.3 mil­lion) with a ten per cent in­crease for the third year if the lease was re­newed, which would take the month­ly rent to $59,840. The lease, which was ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, states: "In con­sid­er­a­tion of the rent re­served and of the covenants on the part of the ten­ant here­inafter re­served and con­tained and on the part of the ten­ant to be paid ob­served and per­formed the land­lord here­by demis­es un­to the ten­ant the demised premis­es land­lord ten­ant to hold the demised premis­es un­to the ten­ant from 1st day of No­vem­ber 2008 from the term of two years with the op­tion to re­new for a fur­ther one-year pe­ri­od on the same terms and con­di­tions as stat­ed here­in but an in­creased month­ly rent of ten per cent of the ex­ist­ing rental (de­ter­minable as here­inafter pro­vid­ed) ef­fec­tive No­vem­ber 1, 2008 yield­ing and pay­ing there­fore dur­ing the said term the month­ly rent of $54,400 such rent to be paid in ad­vance on the first day of each and every month dur­ing the said term and pro­por­tion­ate­ly for any frac­tion of a month."

The two-year lease for the Good­wood Park house ex­pires on No­vem­ber 1, 2010 and the clause in the lease about the ten per cent in­crease on­ly comes in­to force if the Ju­di­cia­ry re­news it. Doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian re­vealed that the dis­crep­an­cy be­tween the Cab­i­net Note and the lease over the in­crease in the third year was raised by the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion's le­gal de­part­ment in Oc­to­ber 2008. The min­istry's le­gal of­fi­cer, Natasha Mooni­lal, in a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 22 to the Prop­er­ty & Re­al Es­tate Ser­vices Di­vi­sion Co­or­di­na­tor, Dawne Wyn­ter ques­tioned var­i­ous parts of the lease.

Cit­ing var­i­ous ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Mooni­lal ques­tioned un­der what au­thor­i­ty the fol­low­ing were agreed to:

(a) An in­creased month­ly rent of ten per cent of the ex­ist­ing rental up­on the State's re­new­al of the lease?

(b) The Lessee is to pay the rent in­to the Lessor's US ac­count at Re­pub­lic Bank, Prom­e­nade Cen­tre Branch, Port-of-Spain.

(c) The Lessee is to at his own cost and ex­pense to pre­serve all or­na­men­tal and fruit trees shrubs and plants on the premis­es, as well as to main­tain the grounds in present con­di­tion.

(d) The Lessee is to car­ry out all mi­nor re­pairs not ex­ceed­ing $US200, to pay for main­te­nance of the swim­ming pool on the premis­es, to pay for gar­den main­te­nance and to pay for pest con­trol ser­vices every four months.

(e) Pay­ment of a se­cu­ri­ty de­posit of $US8,500.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for clar­i­ty on the sit­u­a­tion for­mer Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh said he was un­able to com­ment on the mat­ter.

It was a err in judg­ment

Open­ly com­ment­ing on the is­sue, for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat­nar­ine Shar­ma said the of­fi­cial res­i­dence should have nev­er been sold. Point­ing out that the area where the house was lo­cat­ed is prime prop­er­ty, Shar­ma said: "The house on Pra­da Street should not have been sold in the first place but that was sur­round­ed by con­tro­ver­sy. The on­ly way to re­move all this con­tro­ver­sy is to have an of­fi­cial res­i­dence for the Chief Jus­tice. When I was the Chief Jus­tice, I lived in my own house but it had no en­ter­tain­ment space so I had to rent halls in ho­tels for cock­tail events. The CJs house should not have been sold; it should have been re­built. The CJ de­serves an of­fi­cial res­i­dence but it has to be specif­i­cal­ly built in ac­cor­dance to the lifestyle of his of­fice."

CJ to get of­fi­cial res­i­dence

How­ev­er, fur­ther prob­ing al­so re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to pur­chase a prop­er­ty at Hayes Street, St Clair mere me­tres away from where the for­mer Chief Jus­tice res­i­dence once stood. When the Sun­day Guardian vis­it­ed the pro­posed ear­marked site high bush­es cov­ered the par­cel of land that is fenced with blue gal­va­nize. One res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, told Sun­day Guardian: "We heard the Chief Jus­tice is com­ing to live here. We do not know; we are wait­ing to see."