Lawyer calls on title registration reform

Attorney Sarfraz Alsaran is again calling for a reform of the system of title registration and for stricter scrutiny of the process.

Alsaran made the call after High Court judge, Justice James Aboud ordered that a fraudulent deed be expunged from the system.

The case before the judge was Alsaran’s second involving land fraud. Alsaran’s client, Joan Augusta Lowhar’s late husband ,Osmond Selassie Lowhar, left her 25 acres in St Ann’s.

She continued using the land for agricultural purposes after lawfully transferring the property in her name in 2001.

Four years later, Lowhar entered into agreement for sale of the land when it was discovered by the prospective buyers that the lands had been sold by the widow in 2011.

According to Lowhar’s case before the court, the deed which purportedly sold the land to a Shamatie Kandhar s i ngh-De Leon was dated August 2011, but registered four years later in 2015.

The deed was prepared by attorney Dr Wesley Debideen, who was gunned down at the Grand Bazaar mall in 2013. Lowhar said she did not know who Kandaharsingh-De Leon was since she never met her and was never at Debideen’s offices in Port-of-Spain to execute any deed of conveyance. She also said she never met any Sheldon Gonzales who allegedly witnessed the transaction and signed the fraudulent deed as being a witness to the transaction.

A les pendens (formal notice) was immediately filed to prevent the land from being conveyed to a third party and a High Court action to set aside the deed was initiated by Lowhar’s attorney.

After investigations, it was discovered that the address for Kandharsingh- De Leon did not exist, nor could she be found and there was no record of her on the Elections and Boundaries Commission registered voters database.

An advertisement for service was published in the daily newspapers in January of this year and Kandharsingh-De Leon never appeared.

A trial was held on October 3, and Justice Aboud ruled that the fraudulent deed be struck out and ordered it to be expunged.

Alsaran said, “Land fraud cases like this one and many others before are by no means isolated events . These cases have been happening over a period of time and until the necessary steps are taken by the relevant authorities to totally curtail such fraud, situations like this will continue to occur with frequency. Reform of the whole system of title registration and its requirements should be scrutinised.” In March, Alsaran also appeared alongside attorney Larry Lalla in a similar land fraud case which arose after bailiffs demolished the home of pensioner Deonarine Sookdeo in St Augustine by a man who had fraudulently obtained a deed for the property. When Sookdeo’s attorneys conducted a search in the land registry they found that three false deeds had been affixed to documents relating to the ownership of the property, including one from April 2001, which purported to show that Sookdeo’s brother Ramnarine effected the sale to a Moonie Mungal.

In the two other deeds, originating in May and November 2013, the property was transfered from Mungal to William Bovell and then to Christopher Tiwarie, who allegedly commissioned the bailiff to evict Sookdeo.

In January, the Law Association made a similar call to police as Lalla, as it said it was aware multiple incidents of land fraud, some of which were perpetrated by attorneys.

“The association is in the process of collating a database of these suspicious deeds and questionable transactions, as well as meeting with several stakeholders in order to address this problem,” it said