On Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, then Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark raised a mo­tion on the ad­journ­ment deal­ing with the trans­fer or sale of some 450 acres (182.1 hectares) of “prime agri­cul­tur­al land” lo­cat­ed on the Or­ange Grove Es­tate to Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd, a com­pa­ny found­ed and owned by Do­minic Hadeed.

The French wine and spir­its gi­ant Pern­od Ri­card was grant­ed a 15-year lease by the Gov­ern­ment for the land on March 1, 1995. That lease had a 15-year re­new­al op­tion when the orig­i­nal lease ex­pired in 2010.

Blue Wa­ters ac­quired Pern­od Ri­card’s lo­cal agri­cul­ture and al­co­hol dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness in 2006, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site. The dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness in­clud­ed brands such as Chivas Re­gal whisky, Stolich­naya vod­ka, Mal­ibu rum and Ja­cob’s Creek and Wyn­d­ham Es­tate wines. Blue Wa­ters lat­er di­vest­ed the al­co­hol dis­tri­b­u­tion busi­ness to “an­oth­er sub­sidiary busi­ness,” its web­site states.

Out­lin­ing that Pern­od Ri­card sold its in­ter­est to Blue Wa­ters in March 2007, Mr Mark said, “It was a vir­tu­al se­cret deal in­volv­ing mil­lions of dol­lars which was ex­e­cut­ed with­out knowl­edge or any form of trans­paren­cy on their part to the pop­u­la­tion.

“Mr. Pres­i­dent, in­for­ma­tion has reached me or the par­ty that the new own­ers in­tend to con­struct a soft drink fac­to­ry on the premis­es or on the land. Some 50 acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al land have been al­lo­cat­ed to con­struct this soft drink fac­to­ry by Mr. Do­minic Hadeed, own­er of Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd. As we speak there are over 50 to 100 con­tain­ers on site to ef­fect the equip­ping process.”

In his pre­sen­ta­tion, Mr Mark asked a num­ber of ques­tions, in­clud­ing:

* Who au­tho­rised the trans­fer of the land from Pern­od Ri­card to Blue Wa­ters?

* What were the ex­act terms and con­di­tions of the lease agree­ment en­tered in­to be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Pern­od Ri­card?

* Was there a change in land-use pol­i­cy in­volv­ing this par­tic­u­lar prop­er­ty, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that this is prime agri­cul­tur­al land?

* Was per­mis­sion re­ceived from the plan­ning and en­vi­ron­men­tal au­thor­i­ties to con­duct im­prove­ment works on the 450 acres of land?

* Could the Gov­ern­ment make avail­able a copy of the lease agree­ment that was en­tered in­to be­tween it and Pern­od Ri­card?

In ask­ing his ques­tions, Sen­a­tor Mark, who now serves as the Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, threw in the fol­low­ing com­ments, ac­cord­ing to the Hansard of his con­tri­bu­tion, “This deal, we un­der­stand, is very crit­i­cal be­cause in its wake mil­lions of dol­lars were passed as po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions to the PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the then ad­min­is­tra­tion ) and we want to get an­swers to­day...What were the kick­backs and deals in­volved in this trans­ac­tion?”

No for­mal ev­i­dence

In re­spond­ing to Sen­a­tor Mark’s con­tri­bu­tion, then Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources, Sen­a­tor Arnold Pig­gott, gave a brief back­ground on the ti­tle of the land in ques­tion.

He said the land that Blue Wa­ters ac­quired is lo­cat­ed with­in the Or­ange Grove es­tate, which was owned by the Or­ange Grove Na­tion­al Com­pa­ny Ltd and com­prised 1,282.10 hectares (3,168.15 acres).

Mr Pig­gott told the Sen­ate that the Or­ange Grove es­tate fell un­der the Re­al Prop­er­ty Or­di­nance be­fore the procla­ma­tion of Act 25 of 2005, which vest­ed the es­tate in the State. He said the mem­o­ran­dum of the lease, which was reg­is­tered on Au­gust 28, 1996, be­tween Or­ange Grove Na­tion­al Com­pa­ny Ltd and the com­pa­ny PR Trinidad, gives the ten­ant ti­tle to 182 hectares (449.73 acres) with­in the Or­ange Grove es­tate.

“In­ves­ti­ga­tions con­duct­ed in­to the records of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Ma­rine Re­sources and the pub­lic reg­istry of the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment have re­vealed that there is no for­mal ev­i­dence in sup­port of a trans­ac­tion be­tween Pern­od Ri­card and Blue Wa­ters.”

The Hansard al­so records Mr Pig­gott as say­ing:

“Fur­ther, no ap­pli­ca­tion has been re­ceived to date by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands re­gard­ing a re­quest for con­sent to trans­fer lands at Or­ange Grove from Pern­od Ri­card to Blue Wa­ters. The cer­tifi­cate of ti­tle still records PR Trinidad as the lease­hold ten­ant. We have been do­ing our in­ves­ti­ga­tions our­selves, the record shows that the land re­mains vest­ed in PR Trinidad...

“I wish to ad­vise this ho­n­ourable Sen­ate and the wider na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion, that the orig­i­nal lease agree­ment stip­u­lates that PR Trinidad Ltd, the ten­ant of those lands, is not per­mit­ted to as­sign li­cence to the user of, or oth­er­wise un­der­let or part with pos­ses­sion of, or dis­pose of the whole or any part of the prop­er­ty or any build­ing there­on with­out the pre­vi­ous con­sent of the State who is the land­lord.

“The State is by statute rep­re­sent­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands. As of to­day, no re­quest for such con­sent had been sought by PR Trinidad Ltd, nor was any such con­sent grant­ed by the State, and there­fore, no valid lease arrange­ment in­volv­ing Pern­od Ri­card and Blue Wa­ters can ex­ist in the cir­cum­stances.”

Two points

From what has been re­port­ed from the of­fi­cial record of Par­lia­ment for Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, the fol­low­ing is ap­par­ent;

1) Sen­a­tor Wade Mark felt com­fort­able mak­ing the al­le­ga­tion, with­out pro­vid­ing a shred of ev­i­dence, that the ac­qui­si­tion of the land on the Or­ange Grove es­tate was very crit­i­cal “be­cause in its wake mil­lions of dol­lars were passed as po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions to the PNM”

2) That, as at Feb­ru­ary 19, 2008, there was no valid lease arrange­ment in­volv­ing Pern­od Ri­card and Blue Wa­ters.

Ques­tions

* Con­sid­er those two state­ment above, and ask this ques­tion: If it is true that Mr Hadeed made do­na­tions to the PNM—the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that formed the gov­ern­ment from 2001 to 2010 and 2015 to 2025—why is it that in 2026, there are still ques­tions about the le­gal­i­ty of the lease arrange­ment be­tween Pern­od Ri­card and Blue Wa­ters?

* If there was no valid lease for the land that Blue Wa­ters oc­cu­pies on the Or­ange Grove es­tate in Feb­ru­ary 2008, on what ba­sis did Mr Hadeed spend tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to con­struct and equip a state-of-the-art bot­tling fa­cil­i­ty, which the com­pa­ny moved in­to in 2012, ac­cord­ing to its web­site?

I would sub­mit that Mr Hadeed’s af­fi­davit, dat­ed Ju­ly 3, 2026, and pre­pared by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi, pro­vides clues to the an­swers to those two ques­tions.

In the doc­u­ment, Mr Hadeed states that he ac­quired the hold­ings of PR Trinidad Ltd in 2007 and “al­most im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan dis­cus­sions with the rel­e­vant state agen­cies” con­cern­ing the grant of agri­cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial leas­es for the land.

He said in the af­fi­davit that the lease dis­cus­sions tra­versed sev­er­al years (19) and mul­ti­ple gov­ern­ments (four, in­clud­ing three PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions) and that the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to oc­cu­py the land “re­ly­ing on the promis­es and as­sur­ances that for­mal leas­es would be grant­ed” as it in­vest­ed “sub­stan­tial sums in the ex­ten­sive de­vel­op­ment of the lands.”

The busi­ness­man re­count­ed that there was an of­fer let­ter for the land leas­es from the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, an ac­cep­tance let­ter from Blue Wa­ters on Oc­to­ber 14, 2022, and the pay­ment of full pre­mi­um and pro­cess­ing fees on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2023.

While I am not even a bush lawyer, it seems to me those let­ters and the pay­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2023 ful­fill at least three of the six el­e­ments of a valid agree­ment: of­fer, ac­cep­tance and con­sid­er­a­tion. I do not be­lieve the oth­er el­e­ments of a valid agree­ment—in­ten­tion to cre­ate le­gal re­la­tions, ca­pac­i­ty and le­gal­i­ty— are in doubt ei­ther.

So, if there were valid agree­ments per­tain­ing to the leas­es, on what ba­sis did Min­is­ter of Lands and Le­gal Af­fairs, Sad­dam Af­fairs, write to Mr Hadeed on May 5, 2026, in­form­ing him that Cab­i­net agreed to re­scind pre­vi­ous de­ci­sions tak­en to grant three leas­es to Blue Wa­ters?

And, on what ba­sis did At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie write to Mr Hadeed, al­so on May 5, 2026, re­fer­ring “all events con­nect­ed to the grant of the said leas­es to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

What crime does Mr Je­re­mie want the po­lice com­mis­sion­er to in­ves­ti­gate?

Fi­nal­ly, if the six el­e­ments of a valid agree­ment were in place on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2023, why did the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion fail to grant Mr Hadeed the leas­es in the 19 months and 21 days un­til the April 28, 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion?

If that is the way the PNM treats its friends and al­leged fi­nanciers, I shud­der to think how that par­ty treats its “en­e­mies!”

And are there oth­er oc­cu­pants of state lands at Gold­en Grove, or else­where, who do not have leas­es?