Yvonne Ba­boolal

Calder Hart has been found. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­lo­gan has tracked down the for­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and he is due to ap­pear in court at a date to be fixed. Ram­lo­gan said yes­ter­day Hart had been served with civ­il pro­ceed­ings in a law­suit filed against him by the State. The le­gal doc­u­ments were served on Hart about three weeks ago, he said. The civ­il pro­ceed­ings came af­ter the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port, which called for the po­lice to probe Hart for al­leged­ly mis-spend­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in Ude­cott projects across the coun­try. The re­port al­so called for a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the award of an $85 mil­lion con­tract by Ude­cott to a Malaysian firm with al­leged links to Hart's wife, and ques­tioned Ude­cott's award of a $368 mil­lion con­tract for the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er. Hart, who could not be found af­ter the AG ini­ti­at­ed civ­il pro­ceed­ings against him last June, was tracked down by a "par­tic­u­lar agency." Ram­lo­gan said. He added: "Mr Hart has been lo­cat­ed. I tracked him down. I so­licit­ed the as­sis­tance of a par­tic­u­lar agency that was able to as­sist in con­firm­ing his ad­dress and where­abouts. "That led to us serv­ing him with the doc­u­ments. "He has been prop­er­ly served with the le­gal pro­ceed­ing and has filed an ap­pear­ance in re­sponse to the claim." Ram­lo­gan said ad­di­tion­al pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters have since been sent to Ude­cott's for­mer deputy chair­man (of Ude­cott), Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh and for­mer em­ploy­ees Lee­an­dra Ram­paul and Richard O'Brien.

The T&T Guardian learned Hart had ap­proached Lloyd Bar­net, QC, of Ja­maica, to rep­re­sent him. But even with this civ­il pro­ceed­ings hang­ing over his head, Hart con­tin­ues to ad­ver­tise him­self on a Web site as an in­de­pen­dent glob­al man­age­ment con­sul­tant and boasts of his achieve­ments in T&T. He even in­vites peo­ple to fol­low him on Twit­ter, Linked In and Face­book. Af­ter Hart left the coun­try, his where­abouts could not be traced, Civ­il pro­ceed­ings were sent to him at an ad­dress at East Fort Laud­erdale, Flori­da, where he was re­port­ed­ly liv­ing. An af­fi­davit, filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court on June 1, stat­ed that Hart's where­abouts were un­known. Hart af­ter­ward said he had not dis­ap­peared but con­tin­ued to live at the Fort Laud­erdale ad­dress.

He said he in­tend­ed to fight the State's claims and prove his in­no­cence. Hart's Web site - www.calder­hart.com - shows him jack­et­ed and smil­ing, hand in pock­et, next to im­ages of Ude­cott projects un­der­tak­en un­der his chair­man­ship, in­clud­ing the Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front. The site ad­ver­tis­es him as "one of the fore­most au­thor­i­ties on in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment, fi­nance and mort­gage in the Caribbean".

Hart, the site says, has spent al­most his en­tire life im­prov­ing the lives of cit­i­zens in T&T, Cana­da and the Caribbean. It said he was "cred­it­ed with the suc­cess, de­sign and com­ple­tion" of T&T's in­fra­struc­ture. He cur­rent­ly serves as a con­sul­tant to for­eign gov­ern­ments, high net­work in­di­vid­u­als and pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions in the Caribbean and Cana­da, the Web site claims. The T&T Guardian mes­saged Hart on Face­book but up to late yes­ter­day he had not re­spond­ed. Ude­cott CEO, Kurt Ram­lal, asked yes­ter­day for a com­ment on the civ­il pro­ceed­ings against Hart, said: "The AG took over the mat­ter from us. We are work­ing with their coun­sel. All we do is pro­vide in­for­ma­tion." For­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Mikey Joseph said: "If they want to find Hart they would have found him al­ready." He said in­ter­na­tion­al law was so de­vel­oped now that In­ter­pol, the FBI or the US De­part­ment of State could pick up Hart in any part of the world. He added: "It's not dif­fi­cult to do. I don't know why they were stick­ing.