Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

For­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Calder Hart may have made a bad de­ci­sion. The de­ci­sion may cost him close to $1 bil­lion. This is the hefty price the for­mer Ude­cott boss may have to pay for the award of mul­ti­ple con­tracts for work at the con­tro­ver­sial Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in Tarou­ba by con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Hafeez Kara­math Ltd (HKL)

The com­pa­ny was con­tract­ed to car­ry out con­struc­tion work on bid pack­ages two, three, five and eight at the acad­e­my on De­cem­ber 12, 2006. The con­tract was val­ued at $242,822,500. The acad­e­my was one of the sev­er­al mega-projects un­der­tak­en by Ude­cott un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion. It was ex­pect­ed to host the 2007 Crick­et World Cup.

Nine years lat­er, the wa­ter-soaked acad­e­my is nowhere close to be­ing com­plet­ed. The State claimed Hart ought to have known bet­ter. Hart, who now lives in Newriv­er Dri­ve, East Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, has eight days to file an ap­pear­ance and 28 days to file a de­fence. To­tal pay­ments, in­clud­ing ad­vance pay­ments, made to HKL are list­ed as $888,730,334.50.

Ad­vance pay­ments al­leged­ly made to HKL amount to $400,838,120. Out­stand­ing bal­ance: $65, 680,978.88 Lead coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, QC, and at­tor­ney Ger­ard Ramdeen are rep­re­sent­ing the State. The State is con­tend­ing Hart:

• Failed to ad­here to prop­er pro­ce­dures;

• breached his du­ty to the Ude­cott board; and

• con­cealed fam­i­ly ties in con­nec­tion with the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er.

The works:

• PK Three: All in­te­ri­or and ex­te­ri­or fin­ish­es, ver­ti­cal trans­porta­tion, plumb­ing, fire pro­tec­tion, air-con­di­tion­ing, elec­tri­cal and au­dio vi­su­al.

• PK Five: Score­board.

• PK Six: Roof canopy.

• PK Sev­en: Sewage stor­age fa­cil­i­ties, sports light­ing, suites build-out (ex­clud­ing sta­di­um seats).

• PK Eight: Al­ter­nate/mis­cel­la­neous works - se­cu­ri­ty fenc­ing, food/bev­er­age/con­ces­sion area, ad­di­tion­al re­tain­ing walls south-stand area, tem­po­rary roads/site fa­cil­i­ties/se­cu­ri­ty/safe­ty, walk­ways and curbs.

A sum­ma­ry of the State's claim:

• At board meet­ings in 2006 Ude­cott en­tered in­to a con­tract with HKL to car­ry out con­struc­tion work on pack­ages of the BLCA.

It said Hart ought to have known that due to HKL's lack of man­age­ment ex­per­tise and fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty, there was a high risk it would be able to com­plete the con­struc­tion work on pack­ages two, three and five to eight in the agreed pe­ri­od or at all, and the agree­ment should not have been made.

• Au­tho­rised ad­vance pay­ments were made to HKL when Hart knew and/or ought to have known that its fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty and man­age­ment, tech­ni­cal and con­struc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty were such that the ad­vances should not have been made.

• The doc­u­ment claimed that be­fore the con­tract for the con­struc­tion of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs was award­ed to CH De­vel­op­ment, there was fail­ure and/or re­fusal and/or ne­glect to dis­close to Ude­cott's board and/or the ten­ders com­mit­tee the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Hart's wife and di­rec­tors of CH De­vel­op­ment.

The breach of du­ty aris­ing from the award of the con­tract in re­la­tion to the BLCA is out­lined as fol­lows:

• In or about Oc­to­ber 2002, Ude­cott de­cid­ed to reis­sue an in­vi­ta­tion to ten­der for the con­struc­tion of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Cam­pus Plaza Project, Port-of-Spain.

• The ten­der­ing process for the Cus­toms and Ex­cise con­tract was done by pub­lic ten­der and the board, un­der Hart's chair­man­ship, de­cid­ed on a post-qual­i­fi­ca­tion ap­proach for con­trac­tors.

• On May 5, 2003, Hafeez Kara­math wrote to Hart, as chair­man of Ude­cott, to com­plain about ques­tions Ude­cott asked of him and HKL on:

(a) Fi­nan­cial and ac­count­ing con­cerns and is­sues raised by Ude­cott rep­re­sen­ta­tives;

(b) gen­er­al man­age­ment and or­gan­i­sa­tion con­cerns and is­sues and in par­tic­u­lar the lack of ev­i­dence that HKL had a con­tract with a ma­jor sub-con­trac­tor; and

(c) HKL's fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ty to un­der­take the project.

De­spite those warn­ings, on Oc­to­ber 2, 2006 HKL was giv­en a let­ter of award for the pack­ages. Ac­cord­ing to the claim, HKL pre­sent­ed a pay­ment cer­tifi­cate re-date to Oc­to­ber 2, 2006 which re­flect­ed a new con­tract sum of $379,000,000 and a to­tal ad­vance pay­ment of one per cent, be­ing $68,566,986. Ude­cott al­so is­sued a pay­ment to HKL of $53,898,135 guar­an­tee­ing the re­pay­ment of the ad­vance in the event HKL failed to ful­fil its oblig­a­tions un­der the con­tract.