For­mer min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat has again de­nied any links to il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty re­gard­ing his par­cel of Ca­roni lands.

There have been ques­tions about whether Ramb­harat ben­e­fit­ed from state lands as well, but the for­mer min­is­ter cleared the air on that.

Ramb­harat was the act­ing head of Ca­roni 1975 Ltd when it was closed back in 2003 by for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

He said that un­der the terms of his VSEP in 2003, he was of­fered to pur­chase lands and ac­cept­ed it.

"The re­main­ing peo­ple who re­ceived the of­fer took the mat­ter to the In­dus­tri­al Court. I was the on­ly one who did not," he said.

"In fact, I was, and I re­main the main wit­ness for the com­pa­ny in the In­dus­tri­al Court mat­ter."

Ramb­harat said that the prop­er­ty still be­longs to Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed.

"Notwith­stand­ing the fact that I have an agree­ment for sale with Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed, 18 years af­ter the sale/lease/trans­fer is still in­com­plete. Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed still owns the prop­er­ty," he said.

"This has been around since 2004 be­cause I did not join the court mat­ter and ap­peared as a wit­ness for the com­pa­ny. Every time I ques­tion cer­tain deal­ings with for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed as­sets, these sto­ries reap­pear."

How­ev­er, Ramb­harat will not com­ment on the ru­mours that he demit­ted of­fice af­ter he re­port­ed his col­league, Min­is­ter of Youth Fos­ter Cum­mings for his (Cum­mings) al­leged ac­cess to state lands.

"I see Min­is­ter Cum­mings has been re­spond­ing to the state­ments be­ing made. I have noth­ing to add," Ramb­harat said in a brief ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian on Thurs­day.

Ramb­harat re­signed back in March cit­ing fam­i­ly rea­sons. And in a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, he has been re­placed by for­mer lo­cal gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein.

Back in March, just days be­fore he re­signed from the Gov­ern­ment, Ramb­harat was in­ter­viewed on i95.5 and made se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions about land fraud, open­ly ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion over cor­rup­tion in the trans­fer of lands. He claimed that dur­ing his time in of­fice he was lob­bied to ap­prove a fake deed for a doc­tor who was try­ing to get a $6 mil­lion mort­gage. Ramb­harat said some 50 files were now be­fore the po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion and he is a wit­ness in those mat­ters.

In sub­se­quent in­ter­views, Ramb­harat re­vealed that he was al­so in the process of fi­nal­is­ing his state­ment in re­la­tion to mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice by a se­nior pub­lic ser­vant at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture who had al­ready re­tired.

Since that time, po­lice have charged three peo­ple in these land fraud mat­ters.

Clarence's new man­date

Ramb­harat has since re­turned to serve as the head of the Sin­gle Point Land Au­thor­i­ty, which is man­dat­ed to man­age state lands.

Ramb­harat ex­plained the new man­date.

"This is not an or­gan­i­sa­tion. It was first a com­mit­tee and the com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed among oth­er things, the cre­ation of a com­mon dig­i­tal plat­form (a sin­gle point of au­thor­i­ty) for the cus­tody of state land da­ta ac­ces­si­ble to all state en­ti­ties deal­ing with state land," he said.

"We are in the process of se­lect­ing a soft­ware provider. The in­ten­tion is that I will con­tin­ue with this project and re­lat­ed state land projects in an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty."

When asked why he left of­fice as a min­is­ter to then take up a less sig­nif­i­cant post, Ramb­harat said the is­sue was flex­i­bil­i­ty.

"The is­sue is flex­i­bil­i­ty. In an ad­vi­so­ry role I can work much more hours on a spe­cif­ic task and can work from wher­ev­er I am us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy," he said.

Ramb­harat's fam­i­ly is liv­ing abroad and now he can work vir­tu­al­ly from any­where.