Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Al­though Movi­eTowne chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) Derek Chin has al­leged that the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T sought to take its land, a di­rec­tor at Movi­eTowne says while the board found the op­er­a­tions of the Port Au­thor­i­ty last year to be ques­tion­able, there was no ev­i­dence that there was a con­cert­ed ef­fort at land grab­bing in In­vaders Bay.

In a state­ment to an­oth­er me­dia house on Tues­day, Chin al­leged that the Port Au­thor­i­ty had sought to take its land last year.

At the time, Chin was re­spond­ing to a com­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day Night Re­port, ac­cus­ing “one per­centers” of work­ing with banks to pur­chase land at In­vaders Bay.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Chin said he was on a plane and could not speak and ad­vised Guardian Me­dia to speak with Hay­den Gads­by, one of his di­rec­tors.

When con­tact­ed, Gads­by said, “We are very hope­ful that every­thing will be re­solved over time and that good sense will pre­vail. So, I don’t want to make any in­sin­u­a­tions about any­body’s in­ten­tions when I don’t have any ev­i­dence right now to say that any­thing was un­to­ward or any­thing like that.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had said, “Imag­ine a one per­center walks in­to the of­fice of Min­is­ter Jear­lean John. He comes in with a fold­er with pa­per, and he puts the pa­per on the desk. And you know what is in that pa­per? He puts that pa­per, and he tells her he wants land at In­vaders Bay.”

A day lat­er, Chin said the im­passe be­tween Movi­eTowne and the Port Au­thor­i­ty last year was a covert at­tempt at land grab­bing.

“The whole episode with the at­tack on Movi­eTowne by the Port Au­thor­i­ty last year was a dis­guised at­tempt to grab land and take our prop­er­ty as part of the ac­tion.

“It was not the mon­ey is­sue, as they tried to sell to the pub­lic, but a planned, con­cert­ed ef­fort to steal Movi­eTowne and the lands. It shows you the nas­ti­ness of the last gov­ern­ment,” Chin was quot­ed as say­ing.

He was re­fer­ring to the Port Au­thor­i­ty tak­ing pos­ses­sion of Movi­eTowne af­ter claim­ing the busi­ness breached its lease agree­ment.

The mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts for set­tle­ment and has been ad­journed to lat­er this month.

Movi­eTowne was re­port­ed to be ow­ing the Port-of-Spain In­fra­struc­ture Com­pa­ny (POS­IN­CO) and the Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (PATT) a to­tal of $10,904,121.23 in ar­rears, ac­crued be­tween 2021 and last Au­gust.

Con­tact­ed as well on Chin’s claim, for­mer chair­man of the Port Au­thor­i­ty, Lyle Alexan­der, said no such at­tempt hap­pened dur­ing his tenure, adding he had no fur­ther com­ment to make. He ques­tioned what ev­i­dence Chin had to sup­port his claim.

Mean­while, for­mer line min­is­ter for the Port Au­thor­i­ty, Ro­han Sinanan, said he had no com­ment on Chin’s claims, say­ing that while he had min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight of the port, the Prime Min­is­ter may have been re­fer­ring to an Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) project.

“The port au­thor­i­ty is a statu­to­ry body, and that would not have been a pol­i­cy mat­ter but an op­er­a­tional mat­ter, which the min­is­ter would not get in­volved in,” Sinanan said.

How­ev­er, John, when con­tact­ed, said she had no idea what Sinanan was re­fer­ring to.