Claims amounting to more than $1 billion filed by noted housing contractor YP Seaton and his companies against various government agencies, are scheduled to be heard in the Supreme Court in March, the Jamaica Observer has learnt.

The suits were filed for losses incurred in a failed joint venture agreement to develop 112 acres of land at Ebony View, St Catherine, in a long-running saga.

According to a representative of YP Seaton and Associates, the genesis of the dispute was the sale by the Government in 1997 of a large portion of the Seaton company’s land to scores of squatters as part of an Operation PRIDE Project.

The representative pointed out that the land had been approved for a 500-lot private, housing development, prior to the sale. In an effort to secure some compensation for the portion sold to squatters and to salvage the development potential of the remainder of the land, Seaton’s companies entered into a joint venture agreement with the Housing Agency of Jamaica (HAJ) in 2005.

“The objective of the joint venture was to provide roads, sewage, electricity, water and registered titles to the squatter community and to develop the remaining lands as a private residential housing scheme for sale on the open market,” the company representative told the Sunday Observer.

He recalled that Seaton, through his company and with the assistance of the Government, negotiated a $300-million loan at 18 per cent interest from Jamaica Mortgage Bank to finance the project.

The company was required from the outset to transfer the title for all of the 112 acres of land to the housing ministry which, through the HAJ, was to sell the lots in the squatter community to the squatters. The proceeds from that sale, together with the sale proceeds from the private housing scheme, were to be used to pay off the bank loan.

“We completed 90 per cent of the infrastructure works in the government section at a cost of approximately $200 million,” the company official said, adding that the companies spent approximately $105 million on constructing the infrastructure works and some model houses on the remaining land. He also said that approximately 200 registered titles were issued for the lots in the government section.

“A few months after work started on the project, Mr Seaton was informed by the Registrar of Titles that a part of the project land was dually registered with another title issued by the Titles Office in 2004, and that the registrar was placing a caveat against the project land. Mr Seaton and his companies were not notified before this second title was issued, as required by law,” the company representative said.

“Because of the dual registration issue, the bank refused to provide any further financing, and Mr Seaton was forced to stop all work on the project,” the representative said. “In the meantime, interest and charges on the bank loan continued to accrue. To preserve his good name, Mr Seaton was forced to refund sums in excess of $10 million to purchasers who wanted to cancel their sale agreements due to the work stoppage, despite those deposits having been paid over to the HAJ.”

He said that Seaton asked the Government, as the registered owner of all of the project land, to file a claim against the Registrar of Titles for compensation for the losses on the project. The request found agreement with the State but was subsequently denied on the basis that “Government can’t sue the Government”.

That development, plus the losses being incurred by the Seaton companies under the loan agreement resulted in the companies filing a suit against the Registrar of Titles in November 2010, claiming compensation of approximately $332 million which with interest, he explained, “now amounts to more than $860 million”.

In March 2014, the companies also served a claim on the Government to recover losses in excess of $331 million with interest, resulting from what he said was a “breach of the terms of the joint venture”. That sum, with interest, the representative said, “now amounts to over $560 million”.

He noted that in October 2014 the bank sued Seaton and his companies to recover the entire principal and interest owing under the loan agreement. That pushed the the Seaton companies to file an ancillary claim against the Government, the HAJ and the Attorney General, claiming breach of the terms of the joint venture.

In October 2016 the court awarded judgement in favour of the bank for over $1 billion, with interest from the date of judgement until payment.