There is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to charge for­mer Ude­cott head Calder Hart with per­jury, ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.How­ev­er, Ram­lo­gan, who made that state­ment in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, said he could not charge Hart and he re­spect­ed the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion's (DPP) opin­ion on the is­sue. Ram­lo­gan brought up the name of the for­mer con­tro­ver­sial Ude­cott head-most re­cent­ly re­port­ed in Mi­a­mi-dur­ing de­bate on a mo­tion re­gard­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee to con­sid­er the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act.

He said the bill would help pre­vent an­oth­er com­mis­sion of en­quiry, such as last year's probe in­to Ude­cott and the con­struc­tion sec­tor.He added that the bill would pre­vent a "rein­car­na­tion" of "ghosts" (sic), such as Hart and late PN­Mite John O'Hal­lo­ran, and it al­so would cause "anx­i­ety and an­guish" with­in the PNM.Say­ing there was suf­fi­cient to charge Hart with per­jury, Ram­lo­gan asked rhetor­i­cal­ly if he could "vex" with the DPP if the lat­ter dis­agreed with him with re­spect to whether a per­jury charge could be laid against Hart.

"I can­not..." Ram­lo­gan said

"I re­spect his (DPP's) opin­ion, I do not wish to go down the road of my pre­de­ces­sor where­by there could have been a coup against the ju­di­cia­ry since the for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al was hold­ing se­cret meet­ings with the chief mag­is­trate and the DPP," Ram­lo­gan added.PNM sen­a­tors ob­ject­ed on that count and al­so on Ram­lo­gan's speak­ing about the Hart is­sue. How­ev­er, Ram­lo­gan said there was noth­ing be­fore the court.He said Hart had tes­ti­fied he had not giv­en any ben­e­fit or con­tract to any fam­i­ly mem­bers.Ram­lo­gan said sub­se­quent doc­u­men­ta­tion from Malaysia es­tab­lished a fa­mil­ial link be­tween Hart and his broth­er-in-law whose com­pa­ny got "hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars worth of work." (sic)He said the pop­u­la­tion was frus­trat­ed that he, as AG, was not charg­ing Hart. (GA)