The National Government’s Lever Solomon Limited (LSL) ‘buy-back’ plan is crucial to regain ownership of prime estates on Guadalcanal and the Russell Islands to boost the country’s economic development aspirations.

The plan was announced by Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele Monday this week, stating that the reason the government is involved in this massive investment is to ensure the ownership of the land returns to Solomon Islands and not remain in foreign hands.

Following lengthy legal proceedings surrounding the LSL saga, an Australian Court had appointed a Sydney firm, HALLCHADWICK as Liquidators for the LSL and RIPEL Estates.

This simply means, that HALLCHADWICK had been authorized by the Australian Court to sell these two estates, and payoff the Creditors for the two estates.

This process involves, settling all the monies owed to the creditors which will ensure the creditors will transfer 100 percent of their shares and interests to the Liquidators. The total estimated amount of funds sought to complete this settlement is AUD$25 million, approximately SB$140 million.

Once this settlement is over, the creditors no longer own LSL and RIPEL Estates. The Liquidator will then pass the titles and interests transferred by the creditors to them, to the entity that provided the funds to settle the outstanding dues with the creditors.

HALLCHADWICK came to Honiara in February this year to commence the liquidation. At the time, the government did not have a resource plan to secure the amount of funds needed and was on the verge of losing the opportunity to buy-back the two estates through the Court appointed process and enabling other foreign interests to provide the funds and own the two real estates.

The Caretaker Cabinet at the time agreed to raise the $140 million dollars needed through approval of a special Bond market of $140 million for investors to buy. However, it did not have the authority to progress with this at that time as it was a Cabinet in Caretaker Mode.

“I am pleased to inform you today that the Cabinet, approved the sale of $140 million dollars in Bond to raise the funds needed to secure this buy-back through the liquidators, HALLCHADWICK,” Prime Minister Manele said on Monday.

Once funds are transferred and the settlement is completed, some work will need to be done to clean up all the paperwork including titles of plots of land already sold before handing back the ownership of LSL and RIPEL Estates to the government.

Manele also clarified that the government will establish a Cabinet Subcommittee that will be responsible to oversee the development of a mechanism to oversee the governance and management of the two Estates when they are returned to the government.

This process will involve several steps including:

• Identifying and reaffirming people that have already bought pieces of land from these two estates and have already been given legal titles,
• Identifying people that have been living in parts of the two estates without legal titles,
• Identifying land that had not been used for future investment and development,

Once these processes are established then solutions will be discussed, for instance those already having legal tiles will most likely be reaffirmed.

“The reason the government is involved in this massive investment is to ensure the ownership of the land returns to Solomon Islands and not remain in foreign hands,” Manele said.

Once the ownership returns to Solomon Islands the Cabinet subcommittee will be responsible through consultations to establish a governance and management system to manage the two Estates.

GCU Press