“Ask the CJ.”

This was the re­sponse from the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) house in Oa­sis Gar­dens, En­deav­our, Ch­agua­nas, when asked why Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie had rec­om­mend­ed her and her rel­a­tives for state hous­ing two years ago.

Fol­low­ing a rev­e­la­tion last week that Archie had rec­om­mend­ed 13 peo­ple for HDC hous­es since 2013, the Sun­day Guardian was able to track down one fam­i­ly who the HDC con­firmed was re­ferred to them by Archie.

HDC sources con­firmed that Agnes St Clair, Nicole St Clair and John Al­lan were al­lo­cat­ed town­house 41F in Oa­sis Gar­dens on No­vem­ber 19, 2016.

The source said two oth­er peo­ple, Au­gusti­na Alex­is and Kathy-Ann Alex­is, who Archie al­so re­ferred, were as­sessed and in­ter­viewed but they were not al­lo­cat­ed any hous­ing.

The T&T Guardian tried to vis­it the St Clair fam­i­ly town­house sev­er­al times dur­ing the day­time over the last week but no one an­swered the door.

Around 6.30 pm on Thurs­day dur­ing an­oth­er vis­it, there were two ve­hi­cles parked in the dri­ve­way and lights were on in­side the house. Af­ter knock­ing on the door, a woman an­swered who iden­ti­fied her­self as Miss St Clair but would not say whether she is Agnes or Nicole.

When she was told about the pur­pose of the vis­it, St Clair be­came ag­i­tat­ed and said she did not know her name had been pub­lished on De­cem­ber 13 by the T&T Guardian along with oth­ers who were al­so rec­om­mend­ed for hous­ing by Archie.

“I nev­er gave you per­mis­sion to use my name, why would they use my name?” she asked.

Asked why Archie would rec­om­mend her for hous­ing and what ties she had to him, St Clair replied, “I don’t know, why you don’t go and ask him? Ask the CJ, don’t ask me.”

She de­clined to an­swer any fur­ther ques­tions, say­ing, “I now reach home from work and you here ask­ing me a set of ques­tions, I nev­er give alyuh per­mis­sion to use my name.”

She then closed her front door and took off her porch light.

On De­cem­ber 11, dur­ing a Law As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (LATT) meet­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, 150 mem­bers vot­ed in favour of for­ward­ing an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port on al­le­ga­tions made against the CJ to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The re­port, re­viewed by two of the Caribbean’s most promi­nent at­tor­neys Ea­mon Har­ri­son Courte­nay and Fran­cis Alex­is, will ask that Row­ley con­sid­er whether there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to in­voke im­peach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Archie un­der Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

There have been con­cerns raised as to whether Row­ley should re­cuse him­self from mak­ing any de­ci­sion in this mat­ter, how­ev­er, as amongst the in­for­ma­tion un­cov­ered by the in­ves­tiga­tive team was a claim that Archie had ap­proached Row­ley to as­sist three peo­ple to get State hous­ing in 2015.

Nei­ther Archie nor Row­ley re­spond­ed to the claim when ap­proached by the LATT in­ves­tiga­tive team.

Archie has been wide­ly scru­ti­nised for his close re­la­tion­ships with con­vict­ed felons Dil­lian John­son and Kern Romero and his rec­om­men­da­tion on their be­half that sev­er­al peo­ple get fast-tracked for state hous­ing.

Both John­son and Romero were in­volved in a scheme to so­lic­it mon­ey from un­sus­pect­ing cit­i­zens, promis­ing them HDC hous­ing on the ba­sis of their close re­la­tion­ship with the Chief Jus­tice. John­son was con­vict­ed of forg­ing a judge’s sig­na­ture and Romero was con­vict­ed of fraud by promis­ing HDC homes for mon­ey.