Fran­cis Joseph

Roger Gas­pard wast­ed no time yes­ter­day, as mo­ments af­ter re­ceiv­ing his in­stru­ments as T&T's new Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), he met with a high-pow­ered po­lice team to be­gin in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to al­le­ga­tions made against Calder Hart, the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott).

Gas­pard met yes­ter­day with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert and head of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB), Se­nior Supt Ter­ry Young, at his Win­sure build­ing of­fices to dis­cuss a let­ter sent to him on March 3, from Prakash Ra­mad­har, deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP). The let­ter con­tained al­le­ga­tions of an ap­par­ent fam­i­ly link be­tween Hart and a com­pa­ny which was award­ed $820 mil­lion in con­tracts by Ude­cott, to build gov­ern­ment of­fices. At the end of the meet­ing, Gas­pard, in a tele­phone in­ter­view, said he gave the po­lice cer­tain di­rec­tions and lines of in­quiries to fol­low in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. While he said the let­ter con­tained al­le­ga­tions, Gas­pard said if these turned out to be true, then cer­tain crim­i­nal of­fences would have been com­mit­ted, in­clud­ing con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, per­jury and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. De­spite the meet­ing with the po­lice of­fi­cials, Gas­pard has sent off a let­ter to Philbert, out­lin­ing the pro­ce­dures and his di­rec­tions giv­en yes­ter­day.

Gas­pard said the let­ter raised is­sues un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act 2000, and the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act. He said af­ter he re­ceived the let­ter from Ra­mad­har on March 3, he spent the week­end pe­rus­ing the doc­u­ments which in­clud­ed copies of birth and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates which ap­pear to link Hart's wife Sher­rine, to Sun­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Ltd, the com­pa­ny which was award­ed the ex­pen­sive con­tract to con­struct the new Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs tow­er in Port-of-Spain. COP of­fi­cials con­tend that they re­ceived the doc­u­ments from Malaysia. The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tions would have to reach as far as Malaysia. In­ves­ti­ga­tors would need to get cer­ti­fied copies of the births and mar­riage cer­tifi­cates, state­ments from the Malaysian of­fi­cials who hand­ed them over, and even wit­ness­es who know the peo­ple named on the doc­u­ments. The in­ves­ti­ga­tions, ac­cord­ing to po­lice sources, would be done along the same lines as was done when there was a breach of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, where the po­lice went to Eng­land, and when lo­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors had to go to Flori­da to tie up loose ends with the Pi­ar­co Air­port cor­rup­tion case. "This will be a very de­tailed and thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It would not be so easy, as we do not know what we would en­counter abroad, and whether in the ab­sence of an ex­tra­di­tion treaty and oth­er treaties, we would get the co-op­er­a­tion of the oth­er gov­ern­ment," the po­lice source added.

?Gas­pard hum­ble at ap­point­ment

?Af­ter six months in the job, Roger Gas­pard was fi­nal­ly ap­point­ed Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP). Gas­pard, 46, re­ceived his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment short­ly af­ter 1 pm yes­ter­day. The ap­point­ment was retroac­tive to Sep­tem­ber 17, 2009, the first day when he start­ed act­ing in the post, af­ter Car­la Brown-An­toine was el­e­vat­ed to the High Court bench.

Gas­pard has been at the DPP's of­fice since 1994. Be­fore that, he had been in pri­vate prac­tice for four years, two of which were spent in the civ­il are­na. The ap­point­ment was made by the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion, and ap­proved by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Gas­pard says he re­mains hum­ble by the ap­point­ment.