Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Deputy chair­man at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh says he "had noth­ing to hide" and he was not wor­ried about in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Ude­cott's op­er­a­tions.

Ba­hadoors­ingh, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said "it was busi­ness as usu­al" at yes­ter­day's first Ude­cott board meet­ing since Calder Hart re­signed as Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. He added: "It (the Ude­cott board meet­ing) went very smooth­ly. I chaired the meet­ing as deputy chair­man, which is some­thing I have done in the past in his (Hart's) ab­sence." He said Hart's abrupt res­ig­na­tion over the week­end was not among the is­sues dis­cussed. "I think we all have been ap­prised and in­formed (about Hart's res­ig­na­tion) and we had an in­for­mal pow­er-hour yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) af­ter­noon at Ude­cott (to dis­cuss it)," Ba­hadoors­ingh said. He added: "I asked mem­bers of the board to come in for a chat to just dis­cuss things gen­er­al­ly. Some­one has moved on and we just had a dis­cus­sion to make sure every­thing went smooth­ly." He said the state-owned or­gan­i­sa­tion was able to "evolve it­self" af­ter Hart's sud­den de­par­ture be­cause "it was a strong or­gan­i­sa­tion with good peo­ple." Ba­hadoors­ingh em­pha­sised he was not wor­ried about the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, Roger Gas­pard, launch­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions against the Cana­di­an-born Hart. He said: "Well, I am per­son­al­ly not wor­ried. When you have noth­ing to hide, you have noth­ing to wor­ry about. I am per­son­al­ly not wor­ried.

"The DPP, in his judg­ment, has de­cid­ed that, well, let there be a probe and as a re­sult of the probe, hope­ful­ly we can all car­ry on nor­mal­ly af­ter that." He said he had no ba­sis to sup­port a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Hart. "They (At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie) felt that it was nec­es­sary. I have no ba­sis to say oth­er­wise and let me tell you, if they feel it is nec­es­sary then that is their pre­rog­a­tive. But I wel­come any in­ves­ti­ga­tion at any time if there is any ques­tion," Ba­hadoors­ingh said. An­oth­er Ude­cott board mem­ber, An­tho­ny Cher­ry, said yes­ter­day's meet­ing "was good, just like nor­mal, ex­cept that Calder Hart was not there. "It (Hart's res­ig­na­tion) was not a mat­ter for dis­cus­sion. I mean I re­al­ly can­not dis­close the min­utes of the meet­ing but we just did busi­ness," Cher­ry said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

Cher­ry said Ude­cott's chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Nee­lan­da Ram­paul "did her du­ty in the way that she al­ways does and she made her re­ports as usu­al." He echoed Ba­hadoors­ingh's state­ments that there did not ap­pear to be rea­sons for crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Ude­cott's op­er­a­tions. "As far as I am con­cerned, I do not think that Calder Hart is in­crim­i­nat­ed in any il­le­gal act.