Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

At least one board di­rec­tor at the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (Ude­cott), Sen­a­tor Michael An­nisette, has main­tained that Ude­cott has "done noth­ing wrong." An­nisette stressed that Calder Hart's de­ci­sion to re­sign from Ude­cott as its ex­ec­u­tive chair­man was Hart's pre­rog­a­tive, and that it failed to act as an in­dict­ment of wrong­do­ing at Ude­cott. "That is his call (to re­sign)...That is his de­ci­sion," An­nisette said. "I do not know what the cir­cum­stances were (or) what may have com­pelled him to make such de­ci­sions. Un­til I speak with him and un­til I get a feel (of why he did it), I do not want to spec­u­late. I do not live my life on spec­u­la­tion," he told the T&T Guardian, dur­ing, a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

He con­firmed that Hart left Trinidad and To­ba­go hours af­ter he ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion from the Ude­cott board and four oth­er State boards. An­nisette al­so con­demned a state­ment that Hart along with his wife Sher­rine and daugh­ter Jean fled to Flori­da. "I can­not an­swer for Mr Hart as to the rea­sons why he would have left the coun­try," he said. "There may be gen­uine rea­sons and what not. And then, I do not want to get in­to spec­u­la­tion. "When you say flee, what does that mean? That some­one was go­ing to get ar­rest­ed? What is the pur­pose of say­ing that he fled the coun­try? Flee the coun­try has a se­ri­ous con­no­ta­tion about it." An­nisette ad­mit­ted that he was un­aware that Hart was go­ing to take flight from Trinidad and To­ba­go over the week­end.

He al­so said that he had no pri­or in­for­ma­tion that Hart was go­ing to re­sign on Sat­ur­day. "You see, I saw Mr Hart and we had no such dis­cus­sions," he said. "The last time I saw him was on Thurs­day." A day af­ter An­nisette and Hart met last week Thurs­day, High Court Judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er dis­missed a Ude­cott law­suit to block the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­ves­ti­gat­ing Ude­cott and the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor, from sub­mit­ting its re­port to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. An­nisette ex­plained that he was first made aware of Hart's res­ig­na­tion af­ter callers in­un­dat­ed his mo­bile phone about it. "I was in To­ba­go, be­cause I am here do­ing some work, and then I got a call. I mean my phone was in­un­dat­ed with tele­phone calls: 'Where has Mr Hart gone. Do you know about his res­ig­na­tion'...and that is how I got to know about it," he said.

He con­ced­ed that ef­forts were made to con­tact Hart about his abrupt res­ig­na­tion and de­par­ture from Trinidad and To­ba­go. "I made an ef­fort to call him (Hart)...I did call him and he said he would have called me back but my phone, re­gret­tably or for some rea­son, just went dead on me," An­nisette said. "My Black­ber­ry (mo­bile phone) just went dead. I was talk­ing to (PNM found­ing mem­ber) Fer­die Fer­reira at the time and it just went to­tal­ly blank on me and I have not been able to get it op­er­a­tional. I had to bor­row some­one else's phone and put my Sim card in it." An­nisette added that he was un­able to get in con­tact with oth­er Ude­cott board mem­bers since his mo­bile phone "has not been op­er­a­tional since about just af­ter 1.30 pm" on Sat­ur­day.

"I do not know if they were try­ing to get in con­tact with me," he said. An­nisette was al­so un­able to in­di­cate about the Ude­cott con­ven­ing an emer­gency meet­ing to dis­cuss its op­er­a­tions in the ab­sence of a chair­man. "Re­mem­ber, he (Hart) was an ex­ec­u­tive chair­man. He was not an or­di­nary chair­man. The board can­not ap­point an ex­ec­u­tive chair­man," An­nisette said. "That is the de­ci­sion of the pow­ers. We re­port to a line min­is­ter (Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde). We have to wait and see what de­ci­sion is tak­en by the min­is­ter." He added that Hart ap­peared to be hound­ed out of of­fice. "I can on­ly judge some­body from my in­ter­face with the in­di­vid­ual. I have been on the Ude­cott board from 2005 and I can­not ac­cuse Mr Calder Hart and or any oth­er mem­bers of the Ude­cott board of be­ing in­volved in any im­pro­pri­ety or any cor­rup­tion or any wrong­do­ing," An­nisette said.

"And there­fore that is what I need to judge peo­ple on. Not on any spec­u­la­tions and al­le­ga­tions and in­nu­en­does. That is why I will con­tin­ue to make that point un­til there is con­crete and au­then­tic ev­i­dence." An­nisette added that he would nei­ther hin­der nor re­ject calls for a foren­sic au­dit to be con­duct­ed in­to Ude­cott and its op­er­a­tions. "I, Michael Anisette, have noth­ing to hide as a board mem­ber and what­ev­er au­dit or what­ev­er form of in­ves­ti­ga­tion they wish to take in terms of Ude­cott I have no prob­lems with it what­so­ev­er," he said.