Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Mil­lions of dol­lars al­leged­ly be­long­ing to the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), Calder Hart, is re­port­ed­ly stashed away at a bank in the world's third-rich­est na­tion-Sin­ga­pore. The in­for­ma­tion is the lat­est to be dis­closed by a Malaysian whistle­blow­er who spoke ex­clu­sive­ly with Sun­day Guardian un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty last week.

"The mon­ey from the Malaysian trans­ac­tion was de­posit­ed both from the ini­tial con­tract and the vari­a­tion or­der," the whistle­blow­er said. He point­ed out that a Malaysian of­fi­cial (named) was the par­ty to fa­cil­i­tate the mon­ey trans­fer. Sun­day Guardian learnt that the ac­count was sup­pos­ed­ly opened in a well-known bank (name re­vealed) in Sin­ga­pore back in 2006, fol­low­ing a trans­ac­tion with a Malaysian com­pa­ny to sup­ply IT soft­ware to a num­ber of state en­ter­pris­es.

Among the state en­ter­pris­es that were al­leged­ly ex­pect­ed to un­der­go the up­grade were:

• Min­istry of Labour: $500,000 (TT) (to sup­ply, in­stall and com­mis­sion com­put­er soft­ware for the es­tab­lish­ment of a con­cil­i­a­tion in­for­ma­tion sys­tem)

• Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion: $105,000 (TT) (to de­sign, de­vel­op, im­ple­ment and host a Web site and school­net (In­ter­net) ini­tia­tive pi­lot project)

• Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion: US$800,000 (TT) (to de­vel­op a busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan for the pub­lic ser­vice)

• Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­tries: US$90,000 (busi­ness process man­age­ment)

• Evolv­ing Tec­Knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd: US$506,000 (to de­vel­op a record man­age­ment sys­tem)

• Ude­cott: US$235,000 (busi­ness process man­age­ment)

Fresh doc­u­ments have sur­faced that al­leged­ly link Hart's wife Sher­rine as be­ing one of the key play­ers to se­cure the con­tracts for the Malaysian firm. Ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments ob­tained by Sun­day Guardian, the com­pa­ny Vi­sion­Link Tech­nolo­gies Ltd lists Sher­rine as one of the di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny. The oth­er di­rec­tor is list­ed as Ghis­laine Agos­ti­ni.

The busi­ness ad­dress for the com­pa­ny is al­so list­ed as No 6 De Li­ma Road, Cas­cade-the same ad­dress Hart and his fam­i­ly resided at be­fore mi­grat­ing to Flori­da, days af­ter he re­signed from Ude­cott in 2010. A copy of the agree­ment pro­pos­al ti­tled The de­vel­op­ment of the Busi­ness Con­ti­nu­ity Plan at the Min­istry of Plan­ning re­vealed that the Malaysian com­pa­ny was sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for prepar­ing the doc­u­men­ta­tion sub­mit­ted for the project.

Con­tents of the pro­pos­al stat­ed, "We al­so here­by ac­knowl­edge and con­firm that if the re­quest for pro­pos­al sub­mis­sion is to be suc­cess­ful, the project shall be award­ed di­rect­ly to the (Malaysian com­pa­ny re­moved) and/or its nom­i­nees and all sub­se­quent con­tracts in re­la­tion to the above­men­tioned project shall be be­tween the min­istry and the com­pa­ny or its nom­i­nees."

Un­der the terms of the pro­pos­al, Vi­sion­Link shall be en­ti­tled to a per cent of the con­tract. "Vi­sion­Link Tech­nolo­gies Ltd shall be en­ti­tled to a con­sid­er­a­tion of five per cent of the award­ed con­trac­tu­al val­ue of the said project. This con­sid­er­a­tion shall be net of all pre­vail­ing lo­cal tax­es in Trinidad, in­clud­ing Val­ue Added Tax, and shall be payable to Vi­sion­Link up­on re­ceipt of the fi­nal pay­ment by the (Malaysian com­pa­ny) of the full con­trac­tu­al amount for the said project from the min­istry."

Con­tents of the pro­pos­al were stat­ed as fi­nal and ir­rev­o­ca­ble. Re­gard­ing the pro­gramme to be im­ple­ment­ed at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, a let­ter dat­ed April 27, 2006, that was faxed to Vi­sion­Link, claimed that an agree­ment was made be­tween the Malaysian com­pa­ny and Vi­sion­Link to source a spon­sor for the project.

The let­ter stat­ed: "We ex­pect that, as pre­vi­ous­ly agreed, you are to source for a spon­sor for the above­men­tioned proof of con­cept (POC) to the amount of $1.5 mil­lion in or­der for (Malaysian com­pa­ny name called) to ful­fil its oblig­a­tions un­der this con­cept." The spon­sor amount, ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, was ex­pect­ed to cov­er a frac­tion of the Malaysian com­pa­ny's ac­tu­al im­ple­men­ta­tion costs, ex­clu­sive of soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions.

In ad­di­tion, the fol­low­ing was agreed up­on:

• The agree­ment with the spon­sor, which ref­er­ences will be made to the MoU be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Malaysian com­pa­ny, can be ei­ther be signed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly or be­fore the sign­ing of the said MoU.

• The proof of con­cept shall in­volve the Malaysian com­pa­ny's soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions list­ed in the MoU. The MoU shall be en­ti­tled to free us­age of the soft­ware in the ten se­lect­ed schools and/or in­sti­tu­tions and for the du­ra­tion of the POC pe­ri­od on­ly

• The Malaysian com­pa­ny shall un­der­take to im­ple­ment the above­men­tioned soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions on­ly and shall train rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion di­rect­ly in­volved in the POC to use the said ap­pli­ca­tions

• Up­on suc­cess of the POC, both the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Malaysian com­pa­ny may en­ter in­to an agree­ment of sale and pur­chase the above­men­tioned soft­ware ap­pli­ca­tions and the min­istry may en­gage the Malaysian com­pa­ny for a full roll-out through­out T&T

It was on­ly ear­li­er this year, Malaysian au­thor­i­ties con­firmed the birth cer­tifi­cate of Sher­rine, al­leged­ly link­ing her to Sun­way Caribbean Ltd-the com­pa­ny that was award­ed the mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract by Ude­cott to build the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er.

Sun­way Caribbean Ltd was award­ed the $368,902,836.60 con­tract on May 5, 2005. Days lat­er, CH De­vel­op­ment changed its name to Sun­way Con­struc­tion Ltd. Di­rec­tors Leong Chong Chee, Lee Hup Ming and Ng Chin Poh were re­placed. An e-mail sent to Hart and his wife Sher­rine on the al­le­ga­tions up to late yes­ter­day was not an­swered.