‘Fishy’ Fishers fail finding favour

LANDSURVEYOR Timothy Fisher secured prime real estate from the state-run National
Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL) but probes by the incumbent
administration are unearthing very fishy transactions under the late CEO Horace James.
“What Horace James used to do in years gone by he would write on a piece of paper and give out
land to various persons and in some cases, there were little or no payments being made,” a
knowledgeable source said.
One of those fishy cases seems to involve Mr. Fisher, who is understandably nervous about the
shady transaction and had been trying desperately to regularise what was clearly a funny deal.
“We don’t know the details of their arrangements (between James and Fisher) because it isn’t
documented. But what we do know is that Fisher secured the lands under questionable
circumstances. As a matter of fact, Fisher’s interest and determination to secure a major portion
of the lands at Wales (in Essequibo Islands – West Demerara [Region Three]) compound was
evident when he secured a major portion of land there,” a former NICIL official disclosed.
The former NICIL employee said Fisher appeared to exploit his nearness to James who recruited
him for his land-surveying expertise he wanted conducted on several of the properties of the
state-owned company.
When NICIL launched its recent probe into the conduct of sale of its real-estate, Fisher and his
wife went into panic mode and with others, hurriedly formed their own firm named the West
Side Entrepreneurs Co-op Society, in a bid to gain legitimacy.
Another well-placed source told www.aroundtheregionss.com that the Fishers went further and
tried linking their newly-formed co-op society to a well-known grouping to further stave off
detection.

“This co-op society that they formed came about after they approached the leadership of the
Belle West Co-op Society and expressed an interest in being part of their co-op society. They
(Fisher and Wife) wanted to join Belle West Co-op society as they needed some form of
umbrella body that will help to cover them because of the manner in which they secured those
lands. The fear of NICIL taking the lands away from them because they have no proper and legal
documentation for and evidence that they ever paid for the land,” the source explained.
But the Fishers’ clandestine efforts hit a brick wall when Belle West Co-op Society members
became suspicious and blocked their application.
A member of the co-op body explained: “This man and his wife turned up at one of our meetings
explaining a story to us that didn’t make much sense and despite this we were still considering
their request because they said they are farmers, and the new government was deliberately going
after people and wanted our help. However, we subsequently found out that their only intention
to join the group is because they felt that as members their interests would be protected.”
Furthermore, “when they told us that they didn’t mind paying the group whatever it cost to
become members and even offered to take care of all our legal expenses with regards to filing
documents and addressing other issues, we knew that not only were we entering into a
relationship that will yield problems but with someone who has (major) issues. They are very
desperate for varying reasons and many of the members felt that we should not accommodate
them in the group at this time,” the Belle West Coop Society member added.
James’ successor, Mr. Colvin Heath-London, took steps to regularise the acquisition by the
Fishers but met staunch resistance from two former senior government officials under the A
Partnership for National Unity, Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition government and
was forced to back off.
“There is no doubt that Fisher had protection and favour from former senior Government
functionaries. This was demonstrated when Heath-London attempted to have this, and other land
related issues sorted but was instructed to leave them alone and so he did.” A source close to
what was happening pointed out.

The source blamed poor record-keeping and systemic inefficiencies at NICIL which routinely
hamstrung the state agency. In addition, only very selected officials had knowledge of certain
critical issues leaving many others deliberately in the dark.
“Every transaction should be properly documented so should there be some major issue such as
death, dismissal or removal of someone the information doesn’t get lost. NICIL owns
tremendous (amounts of) lands and it is because of those inefficiencies we saw the past
administration being left in the dark on many transactions and now it seems that this
administration will also be in the dark as well. It’s evident that whoever is in charge fixed or hide
the information so whenever government changes there are a few persons who benefit
significantly from lands that they never even paid a penny for. This isn’t the way that
government resources should be handled,” the source counselled.