War of words erupt over the sale of Gordon flats

By ISAAC NICHOLAS
National Housing Corporation managing director Paul Asukusa yesterday told of another housing deal that should be investigated, and questioned why Minister Andrew Kumbakor was not taking issue about that deal in the media.
He told reporters that a prime property located at Lawes Road was sold for K500,000 five years ago when the property could have fetched NHC more money than that.
Mr Asukusa alleged that the NHC employee who facilitated that sale was now an adviser to the minister.
“The Ela Dorina property was sold cheaply,” he said.
He said the minister, for some reason known to him, had not raised any queries on that sale,” he said.
Mr Kumbakor yesterday accused Mr Asukusa of illegally selling a property at Gordon to a company, now identified as Moneytalks Ltd, owned by a national businessman.
The minister alleged that the previous board of NHC had grouped this property —- a group of flats known as section 97 lot 30, with eight others —- and wanted to offload them for only K400,000.
He said Mr Asukusa went ahead and sold the Gordon property for K600,000, and questioned why he would do this.
But Mr Asukusa hit back, saying he had to go against the board decision to sell all nine properties together because “it would be daylight robbery”.
He said common sense dictated that he could not sell all nine properties for the price of only one property.
He said the Gordon property had been sold, and those genuine tenants evicted from Gordon would be given the first rights to occupy new flats at Tokarara for K300-K400 a fortnight.
He said NHC would build 16 units at Tuatara.
He said the Gordon flat has long been regarded as a criminal haven contributing to various illegal activities such gambling, black-marketing, illegal extensions and drugs.
He said tenants there owed NHC over K100,000 in rental arrears while water bills cost NHC K10,000 monthly.
He said the K600,000 received from Moneytalks Ltd had been paid into the NHC operations account to pay outstanding water and power bills.
Commenting on the minister’s assertion that section 32 of the Public Finance Management Act had been breached because of the sale exceeding K80,000 mark, Mr Asukusa said that any property sale is not confined to that amount as it only applies to normal operational expenditure.
Mr Asukusa distributed copies of correspondences exchanged between him and the minister which he said showed that the minister supported the sale of all nine properties at the price agreed to by the board.
Mr Asukusa claimed that the property was valued by the valuer-general’s office at K70,000 but the NHC valuer put the figure at K440,000.
He stated that the remaining eight properties remained NHC’s property and NHC would sell them through an open transparent tendering process.