?For­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) John Calder Hart is back. Thir­ty five days af­ter Hart re­signed and fled the coun­try, he qui­et­ly re­turned on Amer­i­can Air­lines flight 1819 around 9.40 pm last night. He was in the com­pa­ny of fired Ude­cott chair­man, Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh. The duo board­ed the flight from Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port around 6.15 pm. Hart has since been re­placed by Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Jear­lean John. Hart served on the Ude­cott board from 1994 and be­came its chair­man in 2002. Hart was even­tu­al­ly ap­point­ed as ex­ec­u­tive chair­man in 2006. It was on March 5, that Hart was giv­en 24 hours to re­sign af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie who in­formed him that Hart may have a case to an­swer, aris­ing out of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. His res­ig­na­tion came days af­ter a se­ries of doc­u­ments were re­vealed al­leged­ly link­ing his wife, Malaysian-born Sher­rine Hart and a com­pa­ny which was award­ed an $820 mil­lion con­tract by the Ude­cott board.

Hart al­so stepped down from four State boards–the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny, The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Ltd and the Home Mort­gage Bank. He left T&T in the com­pa­ny of his wife and young daugh­ter. Cit­i­zens had been ex­press­ing con­cerns that he would not re­turn to T&T. On­ly last week the Uff Re­port stat­ed that Hart was wield­ing more pow­er than some politi­cians. Al­so, Je­re­mie an­nounced on April 6, that the Re­port would be re­ferred to Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard. Chair­man of the En­quiry, John Uff, rec­om­mend­ed that the po­lice probe Hart in re­la­tion to the award of the $368 mil­lion Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er and the $885 mil­lion con­tro­ver­sial Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um project in Tarou­ba.

In ad­di­tion, Uff al­so rec­om­mend­ed an au­dit of the con­duct of all Ude­cott se­nior staff and di­rec­tors for the pe­ri­od 2004 to 2009. The board, chaired by Ba­hadoors­ingh, and in­clud­ing An­tho­ny Cher­ry, Wen­dell Dot­tin and Michael An­nisette was fired with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on April 6. A new board was to be re­con­sti­tut­ed with­in two weeks. Last night up­on his ar­rival at Pi­ar­co, a pas­sen­ger on the same flight told the Sun­day Guardian that Hart and Ba­hadoors­ingh, who are no longer pub­lic of­fi­cials, did not pass through the nor­mal chan­nels of Im­mi­gra­tion and Cus­toms. They were re­port­ed­ly whisked away to the VIP sec­tion with the help of an of­fi­cial in the Cus­toms De­part­ment. The pas­sen­ger, a busi­ness­man who spoke to the Sun­day Guardian, ques­tioned why he as a law abid­ing cit­i­zen was not af­ford­ed the same treat­ment.