Renewed call for MPs to debate ‘land grabs’
A man whose family lost a substantial portion of property in the West End has renewed his call for the commission that investigated the issue to have its findings debated in the House of Assembly.
George Brown told The Royal Gazette that any legal challenges to the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Historical Land Losses were separate from the panel’s findings and recommendations.
As legislators are expected to return to the House this week, Mr Brown called for the recommendations in the report from four years ago to be discussed.
He said: “This is a matter of public interest, of correcting the wrongs of the past, of being a voice for the voiceless — this is about the truth, and we cannot allow the truth to be buried.”
The brother of the late Progressive Labour Party MP Walton Brown, who pushed in 2014 for the CoI to go ahead, said it was time legislators discussed the recommendations of the panel, which issued its report in December 2021.
A motion for MPs to discuss the commission’s findings was first tabled upon publication of the report but later withdrawn “pending the disposition of various matters before the courts”.
David Burt, the Premier, brought it back on March 28 after advice from counsel that “those matters have been substantially disposed of”.
A government spokeswoman said last night that the Premier “has made it clear that he is determined to advance this debate”.
Mr Brown said civil cases against the commission brought by litigants including Myron Piper and Khalid Wasi were “wholly separate” from the CoI’s recommendations.
The CoI, which began hearing submissions in 2020, found in the Brown family’s favour that “two major transactions” related to four acres of land once owned by Mr Brown’s great-uncle, John Augustus Alexander Virgil, at Spring Benny in Sandys, were “fraudulent”.
The family have maintained that the property was originally to be divided among seven beneficiaries after Mr Virgil’s death in 1972.
However, they said they were denied by the bank when they went for the will to be executed.
A 1978 report for the family, compiled by the Bank of Butterfield and quoted by the CoI’s own report, concluded that “to our knowledge, there was no real estate owned by the late Mr Virgil on his death”.
The family took a different view, insisting that lawyers, realtors, government officials and financiers had seized Mr Virgil’s property with the bank’s complicity.
The CoI found in 2021 that “several men were part of a criminal conspiracy” to dispossess Mr Virgil and his inheritors, based on “fresh and compelling evidence” that documents purporting to show the sale of the land had been forged.
The commission also found flaws in an internal four-year investigation by the bank in the 1970s, along with a subsequent police inquiry.
A lawyer for the bank who appeared before a civil court in April acknowledged that documents may have been forged, but said the bank was not aware in the years immediately after Mr Virgil’s death.
Mr Brown told the Gazette in December 2021 that the Government should consider the commission’s recommendations and take any required legal steps.
He added then: “Bring us home — there’s no more fight left in us for all this. The report has been done.”
However, nearly four years on, MPs have yet to debate the matter.
Mr Brown said yesterday: “I’m standing up for my ancestors.
“This needs to be handled now because how much longer can it go on? People are going to their graves without their voices being heard.”
He insisted: “There is plenty of fight left in us.”
In October 2024, Mr Virgil’s family launched a civil court case against Butterfield, accusing the bank of failing in its fiduciary duty by “engaging in constructive fraud, reckless conduct and deliberate concealment” of the land grab.
The bank’s lawyer said at the hearing in April that the writ of summons served last year was “frivolous and vexatious, and ought to be struck out as an abuse” because the claims had previously been considered.
The matter continues.
Mr Brown said last week that he had asked Mr Burt and Dennis Lister, the Speaker of the House, for the CoI report to have its day in Parliament.
“My biggest concern is that this is all about accountability, transparency and addressing historical injustices,” he said.
“This would demonstrate a commitment to resolving longstanding issues in an open and honest manner. In doing that, it would build trust among our own — particularly those coming from marginalised communities.
“A parliamentary debate will provide an opportunity to formally acknowledge the wrongs and their ongoing impact on us.”
Mr Brown insisted that the clear separation of the legislature from the judiciary meant there was no barrier to a parliamentary debate, regardless of what was before the courts.
He added: “We are not asking the House of Assembly to comment on the legal challenges, but to debate the recommendations of that report.”
Contacted by the Gazette, Mr Wasi disagreed, stating: “I totally sympathise with anyone as far as having this debated in Parliament, but under the way the legislature is constructed, the debate in Parliament would put an absolute end to the process.
Mr Wasi said his position was that the CoI report was “incorrect”.
He added: “You can’t debate a report which from a legal perspective has not gone through a rigorous test.”
Mr Wasi added that his own constitutional challenge, which he said was “totally separate” from issues raised by other litigants, was soon to go before the courts.
Mr Brown responded that there was nothing to show that “the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the CoI report” were “unready to be debated”.
He added: “There is no scope for changing the report, or dismissing it — so a debate on its findings, conclusions and recommendations in the House is appropriate.
“The pending legal matters will not and cannot in any way impact the content in the final report.”
Invitations for comment were sent by e-mail to Mr Burt, through the Government’s communications department, and to Mr Lister.
Last night, a spokeswoman for the Government reaffirmed its commitment to “a full debate” on the commission’s report.
She said: “The Government has twice tabled a motion to have this debate.
“The Government embarked on this process to give voice to those who had been disenfranchised by systemic injustice.”
Reflecting on Mr Burt’s statement to the House on March 28, the spokeswoman added: “The Premier has made it clear that he is determined to advance this debate, again reminding the House and the public when the motion was tabled, that ‘it is never too late for justice … [and that] … the process of providing justice starts with a step towards truth'.”
A government spokeswoman said in April that “matters … have now been served on the Government in what appears to be a new attempt at bringing the CoI back to court”.
She added then: “The matter is being reviewed and will be robustly defended if required.”
The spokeswoman said: “While this is a potential substantive issue now outstanding, it does not appear that this should prevent the debate considering the four years since the report was completed and given that there has been no injunction sought.”
• To see the Premier’s statement of March 28, 2025 in full, see Related Media
• It is The Royal Gazette’s policy not to allow comments on stories regarding court cases. As we are legally liable for any libellous or defamatory comments made on our website, this move is for our protection as well as that of our readers
