Richard Lord

Af­ter more than two years of in­ves­ti­ga­tions, po­lice are un­able to charge for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott), Calder Hart, be­cause they do not have enough cred­i­ble ev­i­dence. Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), Dr Anirudh Ma­habir, said that was the mes­sage from Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Dwayne Gibbs dur­ing an hour-long meet­ing at the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, Sackville Street, Port-of Spain. Ma­habir and COP par­ty chair­man,Joseph Toney met with Gibbs at his of­fice yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the re­cent po­lice raids at CCN TV6, News­day and the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU).

The po­lice said the raids were in­tend­ed to get crit­i­cal ev­i­dence to as­sist in their in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The raids have been se­vere­ly crit­i­cised by the me­dia and oth­er in­ter­est groups. Ma­habir told re­porters Gibbs as­sured COP the Hart in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not "on the back burn­er" and was still be­ing pur­sued. Hart is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for al­leged per­jury. Ma­habir said the mat­ter was raised with Gibbs be­cause the pub­lic felt it was tak­ing too long. He said he was hap­py with the as­sur­ance Gibbs had giv­en.

He said Gibbs said he want­ed cred­i­ble ev­i­dence against Hart be­fore any charges could be laid. Toney said the meet­ing was "open, frank and pro­duc­tive." He said the COP told Gibbs the po­lice need­ed to be more sen­si­tive in car­ry­ing out raids. He said Gibbs said the law­men had to ex­e­cute their work in the way they did be­cause of the mat­ters be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Toney, a for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, said the ex­er­cis­es neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed the im­age of the ser­vice. He said Gibbs ap­pre­ci­at­ed COP's in­ter­ven­tion and hoped to meet with the par­ty's lead­er­ship from time to time.