The Lot 47 Happy Acres Property sold to Royston King
Amidst the inquiry into City Hall, questions are being raised over the acquisition of a $30M property by Town Clerk of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council, Royston King.
King was instructed to proceed on leave last month to facilitate investigations into City Hall by the Local Government Commission, (LGC).
The LGC has launched a Commission of Inquiry into the affairs of City Hall following complaints by several agencies and individuals about corruption and mismanagement of funds at the administrative level of the Council.
In addition to the reports, allegations were leveled against King who is the head of City Hall’s administration, for abusing his authority, bypassing the procurement rules to hand out contracts to friends and family, failing to remit to the Credit Union contributions deducted from workers’ salaries in keeping with financial regulations, among other things.
Added to the accusation, new information surfaced this week about the purchase of a multimillion-dollar property at Lot 47 Happy Acres, East Coast Demerara, (ECD).
According to documents seen by this newspaper, the Town Clerk is said to have brought the property on January 7, 2017.
The documents further outlined that “the property lot numbered 47 being a portion of Block lettered “T” known as Happy Acres, is part of Montrose and Felicity, in the La Bonne Intention-Better Hope Village District, East Coast of Demerara, in which there is a building and erections valued and priced at $30 M.”
According to an agreement of sale, King whose address was given Lot 3279 Canal Place, South Ruimveldt Park, Georgetown, Demerara, purchased the
Town Clerk: Royston King
property from its original owners by way of a Power of Attorney.
The information also outlined that documents were drafted on King‘s behalf by Attorney- at -Law, Roger Yearwood who is also the lawyer for the Georgetown M&CC.
Earlier this year, King had refused to proceed on leave to facilitate a forensic audit by the Auditor General into the affairs of the M&CC.
Even in the face of a no confidence motion filed by Alliance for Change, (AFC) Councillor, Sherod Duncan, King said that he decided to stay on the job, given the circumstances.
“Given all that has been happening; given all the unfolding events, perhaps it would be more responsible for me to stay on a bit longer,” King said.
The forensic audit of the city was scheduled to look into millions of dollars in funds provided by Central Government, dating as far back as 2015.
The Auditor General’s decision came when city treasurer, Ron McCalmont, who is legally the financial reporting officer for the council, was absent from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting held at Parliament Buildings on February 19, last.
The PAC noted that state auditors have not received vouchers, statements of expenditure or any piece of document that can verify that City Hall spent $173.5M.
This amount included Kitty Market, $60M; constabulary training school, $23.9M; city engineer’s building, $13.5M; constabulary headquarters, $12.9M; Albouystown clinic, $21.5M; and office equipment and furniture, $42.1M.
Questions have been raised about the $300M allotted for the Georgetown restoration programme in 2015. Some $6.2M was expended to purchase a double cab pick-up for the city police; $52.1M for debushing Le Repentir Cemetery and $241.6M for the restoration of Georgetown.
Several payment vouchers were examined and discrepancies observed.
Auditors found 167 instances totalling $159.9M where there was no evidence of the payment vouchers.
There were instances where approval by the city treasurer was not seen on 140 payment vouchers totalling $143.7M; no evidence of the city’s financial committee approving 48 payments totalling $48.4M; no evidence of receipt or payee acknowledgement for a payment of $750,000 to a contractor and the basis of award of several contracts for the weeding of parapets, desilting of drains and cutting down of trees.
