Kali­fa Clyne

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wayne Sturge has writ­ten to the Unit­ed States Em­bassy re­quest­ing that the US in­ves­ti­gate whether the Amer­i­can fi­nan­cial sys­tem was used by a T&T na­tion­al in al­leged "acts of fraud and the il­le­gal pay­ments of bribes and kick­backs."

In a let­ter mailed via Fedex to the US Charge d'Af­faire at the US Em­bassy, Mar­garet Diop, Sturge called on the US gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine whether Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) chair­man Noel Gar­cia had com­mit­ted an ex­tra­ditable of­fence. Sturge copied US At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Loret­ta Lynch.

He al­so in­clud­ed in the doc­u­ment the com­plaint he made on Mon­day to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on the mat­ter.

In a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, Sturge showed a dossier of doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence which he al­leged showed cor­rupt ac­tions by Gar­cia, which he said he had pre­sent­ed to the com­mis­sion and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions so a probe could be launched.

In his re­quest to the com­mis­sion, Sturge pre­sent­ed doc­u­ments he claims showed that a favoured con­trac­tor fund­ed part of Gar­cia's son's uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion. He re­quest­ed that the com­mis­sion in­ves­ti­gate whether Gar­cia ac­cept­ed kick­backs in the form of pay­ments for the ed­u­ca­tion of Gar­cia's son Chris­t­ian be­tween 2002 and 2005 from own­er of PACE Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed Ju­nior Joseph. At that time, Gar­cia was the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

PACE Con­struc­tion re­ceived mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts from the HDC for the con­struc­tion of hous­ing units.

Gar­cia has de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, stat­ing he and his wife had paid for the ed­u­ca­tion of all their chil­dren. He al­so said he had no pow­er over which com­pa­nies were grant­ed con­tracts dur­ing his tenure at HDC.

In his let­ter, Sturge re­quest­ed that the US, through the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty of the USA, use its pow­er to make the rel­e­vant en­quiries to de­ter­mine whether ac­counts in the Amer­i­can fi­nan­cial sys­tem were used by "per­sons in­clud­ed, but not lim­it­ed to Mr Noel Gar­cia, in con­nec­tion with acts of fraud, in­clud­ing the re­ceipt or trans­fer of il­le­gal pay­ments, bribes or kick­backs and if so the ex­act na­ture source and dis­po­si­tion of those funds."

He said if any­one had used their of­fices to com­mit or as­sist in the com­mis­sion of transna­tion­al of­fences, they should be brought to jus­tice by the state in which those of­fences were com­mit­ted.

He said he had brought the in­for­ma­tion to all of the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in T&T and con­sid­ered it his du­ty to bring the in­for­ma­tion to the at­ten­tion of the au­thor­i­ties in the US.

At­tempts to reach At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.