At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day clar­i­fied his state­ments over the pos­si­ble ar­rest and ex­tra­di­tion of for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Calder Hart, say­ing he had no say in the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of the case.In a Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle, Ram­lo­gan had com­ment­ed on Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to en­sure Hart re­turns to T&T to face sev­er­al on­go­ing civ­il law­suits over de­ci­sions made dur­ing his tenure.

How­ev­er, there was some pub­lic de­bate yes­ter­day that it seemed the AG to be in­ter­fer­ing in the crim­i­nal side of the mat­ter.In a re­lease sent from his of­fice yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan point­ed out that while his of­fice was re­spon­si­ble for all civ­il lit­i­ga­tion filed by or against the State, crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions were in­deed with­in the re­mit of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions."When asked if charges were laid against Mr Hart, what could be done if he re­fused to tes­ti­fy, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ed that Mr Hart could be ar­rest­ed and ex­tra­dit­ed de­pend­ing on the charge laid," the re­lease said.

Ram­lo­gan al­so said that in civ­il courts, the State could se­cure the at­ten­dance of a wit­ness by serv­ing them with a sum­mons."If a wit­ness fails to at­tend court, he can be com­mit­ted to prison for con­tempt of court un­der part 53:5 of the Civ­il Pro­ceed­ings Rules of Court," the re­lease said.

Hart has been liv­ing in Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, since he re­signed from Ude­cott and left the coun­try in 2010. One claim by the State against Hart is for $500 mil­lion for the mis­man­age­ment of the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba.The oth­er de­fen­dants in the case are for­mer Ude­cott deputy chair­man Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, for­mer fi­nan­cial man­ag­er Ri­car­do O'Brien and for­mer cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Nee­lan­da Ram­paul.Civ­il pro­ceed­ings start­ed af­ter the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port, which called for the po­lice to probe Hart for al­leged­ly mis­spending bil­lions of dol­lars in Ude­cott projects across the coun­try.