Fran­cis Joseph

An al­le­ga­tion that Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) chair­man, Calder Hart, award­ed a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Gov­ern­ment con­tract to his wife's broth­er and broth­er-in-law is now in ev­i­dence, un­chal­lenged, be­fore the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. A statu­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tion, dat­ed May 18, 2009, was sworn to by Carl Khan, the for­mer hus­band of Sher­rine Hart, the present wife of Calder Hart. That af­fi­davit was ten­dered in­to ev­i­dence and an in­vi­ta­tion was ex­tend­ed by the com­mis­sion for Khan to be cross-ex­am­ined. When the com­mis­sion re­sumed yes­ter­day, af­ter months in lim­bo, com­mis­sion chair­man, John Uff QC, an­nounced Khan's ev­i­dence would stand as at­tor­neys for Calder Hart have stat­ed they would not be seek­ing to cross-ex­am­ine Khan on the con­tents of that af­fi­davit. In the af­fi­davit, Khan re­vealed the di­rec­tors of Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Lim­it­ed–Al­lan Lee Hup Ming and David Ng Chin Poh–were the broth­er and broth­er-in-law re­spec­tive­ly of Sher­rine Hart.

Sun­way, for­mer­ly known as CH De­vel­op­ment, was award­ed the con­tract to build the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er (MLA) in Port-of-Spain. Khan said he was mar­ried to Sher­rine Hart on De­cem­ber 31, 1997 and they lived at Cal­cut­ta Set­tle­ment Road, Freeport. They were di­vorced on May 1, 2000. Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing this rev­e­la­tion, dis­missed Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, once again called on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to fire Hart as chair­man of Ude­cott and oth­er State agen­cies. Row­ley al­so called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­tents of Khan's af­fi­davit. Row­ley said: "In the face of this de­vel­op­ment by the com­mis­sion to ac­cept Mr Khan's un­con­tro­vert­ed tes­ti­mo­ny as ev­i­dence, the al­le­ga­tions con­tained in Mr Khan's tes­ti­mo­ny, re­sult in me now say­ing once again, that the Prime Min­is­ter should act im­me­di­ate­ly and re­move Mr Calder Hart as chair­man of Ude­cott and as chair­man of oth­er State agen­cies where he now func­tions.

"What has now been ac­cept­ed as un­con­tro­vert­ed ev­i­dence is that se­ri­ous con­trac­tu­al short­com­ings took place at Ude­cott and ma­jor con­tracts have been award­ed, in par­tic­u­lar the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er. "The ev­i­dence is that the chair­man of Ude­cott, while ad­mit­ting he in­vit­ed CH De­vel­op­ment to bid, and he al­so said he did not know who these peo­ple were, the tes­ti­mo­ny be­fore the com­mis­sion is now ev­i­dence that the per­sons are mem­bers of his fam­i­ly and in that sit­u­a­tion it trig­gers and war­rants cer­tain crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions." The Diego Mar­tin West MP added: "It al­so ran afoul of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act and a per­son against whom such al­le­ga­tions are made, such a per­son should not be en­joy­ing the po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty as chair­man of these agen­cies and should not be en­joy­ing the pro­tec­tion and sup­port of the Prime Min­is­ter.

"I am once again say­ing that Mr Hart be im­me­di­ate­ly re­moved from these po­si­tions. These are huge pub­lic ex­pen­di­tures. "In the case of the MLA Tow­er, the orig­i­nal con­tract was $368 mil­lion. Re­cent­ly we saw, with­out com­pet­i­tive ten­der­ing, an ad­di­tion­al $300 mil­lion was added to that con­tract for out­fit­ting. "So that con­trac­tor would have end­ed up with $668 mil­lion worth of work, which we now see in the ev­i­dence, was di­rect­ed to the con­trac­tor in con­tra­ven­tion of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, and pos­si­bly in con­tra­ven­tion of the an­ti-cor­rup­tion laws of this coun­try." Row­ley said pub­lic pol­i­cy de­mand­ed ac­tion be tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly. He does not want the Gov­ern­ment to say that it will not act un­til the com­mis­sion pub­lish­es its re­port. "Enough in­for­ma­tion is avail­able and this morn­ing's de­vel­op­ment sim­ply deep­ens this scan­dal. We can­not have an in­di­vid­ual shar­ing agen­cies, en­joy­ing Cab­i­net's sup­port, spend­ing pub­lic monies while a com­mis­sion of in­quiry re­ceives in­for­ma­tion in the na­ture of Mr Carl Khan's tes­ti­mo­ny," Row­ley de­clared.