A school principal has been arrested and charged with the illegal sale of Government lands in Clifton, near Bernard Lodge in St Catherine, police confirmed Tuesday night.

The accused, identified by the police as Suelyn Ward-Brown, principal of a Corporate Area school, is charged with breaches of:

1) the Proceeds of Crime Act;

2) Law Reform Fraudulent Transactions Special Provisions Act; and

3) the Common Law – Conspiracy to Defraud Act.

Police said the accused will be brought before the court at the earliest possible date.

At the same time, police said at least three other individuals of interest are under investigation in connection with the illegal Clifton land sale, which caused a firestorm earlier in the month when 10 structures on the lands owned by the Sugar Corporation of Jamaica (SCJ) Holdings were demolished.

Several, including members of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP), had accused Prime Minister Andrew Holness and his Administration of being insensitive to the plight of the poor, but Holness told Parliament last week that all the structures flattened, which had been illegally constructed on lands reserved for development, were all unfinished and that no one was living in any of them at the time of demolition.

He pointed to one finished structure which was left standing because the SCJ wanted to ensure that no one had been living there.

Holness, who had ordered a full investigation into the illegal land sale when he addressed Parliament last Tuesday, said criminals were involved in the capturing and sale of Government-owned lands. In the case of Clifton, the notorious Klansman gang was fingered.

It was alleged that a top-ranking member of the Klansman gang was involved in transactions for the properties with people desperate to own their own houses.

Reports are that the sale of lands and construction went ahead despite notices posted on the property.

“The notices were served on March 12 and we have pictures of the notices being posted. The people were warned that ‘all permanent structures and other structures remaining on the property after this notice would be demolished’, so it is unfair to say the Government acted unfair almost seven months later,” a Government source told the Jamaica Observer last week.

Holness told Parliament that, “The National Security Council, in reviewing the development plan, had observed an insidious and growing threat in the area, where alleged gangsters were capturing lands in the area adjoining the Clifton community, creating their own informal subdivision and selling the lands under the false pretext of ownership or building on it themselves.

He told the House that, had the situation been allowed to continue, it could have led to a massive land grab in the area, displaced farmers, and presented a threat to the sovereignty of the State.

“I could never allow that,” Holness declared. “Look here, I’ve been prime minister three times already, I don’t want to leave a legacy where this country descends into disorder and lawlessness,” he said, referring to scrutiny about the demolition resulting in a possible political sacrifice on his part.

The prime minister, however, indicated that SCJ Holdings was willing to offer support to people who had been building on the reserve lands, but stressed that this would only be offered if these individuals approach the Government “with clean hands”, by providing information as to how they came into possession of the lands on which they were building.

“There is a process that will be applied to them. Firstly they must come and identify themselves to us. Come to the SCJ, come with clean hands, you have to tell us how this happened. In the process of regularising this situation, if that is going to happen, we have to understand how it happened. Come to us and reason with us and we will try and work out a solution, bring your papers and come to us,” Holness stated, adding that he could not disclose the nature of the support that would be offered.

The PNP, in addition to chiding Government for removal the illegal structures from State-owned lands, promised to assist people who had built illegally on the Clifton lands with legal fees to take action against the Government.

According to the PNP, the action of the Government represented a blatant disregard for the tenets of the United Nations Convention on Human Rights and supporting international conventions to which Jamaica is a party.