Finance Minister Bob Richards has rejected a claim that Government is biased against developer Michael MacLean.Mr MacLean told this newspaper he felt “discriminated against” because his project to build a hotel in the City of Hamilton had not been backed up by the offer of a financial guarantee from Government, while such a deal was being considered for the Morgan’s Point luxury resort project.In an interview with The Royal Gazette yesterday, Mr Richards said the two projects were not comparable.And he reassured the public that should Government go ahead and give a financial guarantee to the Morgan’s Point developers it would come with a fee and conditional on collateral.“Nobody’s getting any gifts here,” he said. Asked what Government’s policy is on issuing sovereign guarantees to private sector projects, he said: “We don’t do them. Its not something that we do. This is an exceptional situation because it is a polluted property.”And, he said, Government was renegotiating its agreement with the Morgan’s Point developers as the former Progressive Labour Party administration had entered into an “unworkable” arrangement.“It required the Bermuda Government to do things that it could not do,” he said. “And it required the Morgan’s Point people to do things it did not want to do.”Remediating the 240-acre brownfield site to the standard agreed would cost the taxpayer “hundreds of millions of dollars”, Mr Richards said.“Even if we spent a billion dollars we couldn’t be sure we could get the whole property to that standard. So we entered into negotiations with Morgan’s Point to try to come to an arrangement that would help Bermuda, that would bring in inward investment and would bring us a new hotel property that would create jobs,” he said.“Otherwise, it would just sit there.”Mr Richards announced last week that he was considering providing a sovereign guarantee for the project because the developers had indicated that the environmental remediation was making it difficult to raise financing.He said a non-binding “letter of comfort” had been issued to Morgan’s Point Ltd to enable the company to begin financing negotiations for the first phase of the project.Mr MacLean accused Government of bias saying a sovereign guarantee was on the table for a $15 million bridge loan for his project before the election, but the new administration had decided not to proceed with it because of the country’s debt level.“This situation (Morgan’s Point) is quite different from the Par-la-Ville development in Hamilton,” Mr Richards insisted yesterday.“Morgan’s Point is a 200-acre site. It’s the last large open space we have in Bermuda. It’s strategic, It’s polluted. They can’t raise finance on a polluted property. That’s why we got into the area of thinking about a guarantee.”Another difference between the two projects was that Government had “skin in the game” at Morgan’s Point as millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money had already been spent there.And the Minister stressed that it was wrong to give the impression that Mr MacLean had been given a guarantee.“He had been talking to them about it, yes,” Mr Richards said. “But they didn’t agree to do it.”He said: “We did not undo something that was done originally. So he’s in the same position today as far as a guarantee is concerned as he was on December 16.”And the Minister insisted that his colleagues in Cabinet had “bent over backward” to support Mr MacLean’s project.“They’ve gone more than the extra mile to help him move forward. So I was rather surprised to see these statements in the newspaper.”The videotaped interview will be published in full in tomorrow’s edition, and online (www.theroyalgazette.com).