For a sec­ond day, of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) raid­ed Sun­way and David Mont­gomery and Char­tered Ac­coun­tants as they stepped up their crim­i­nal probe in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott).

Of­fi­cers again seized sev­er­al box­es of fi­nan­cial, le­gal and con­trac­tu­al doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to bil­lions of dol­lars dis­bursed by Ude­cott for sev­er­al con­struc­tion projects. Com­put­ers and hard dri­ves were al­so seized, just like on Wednes­day when the same of­fices were raid­ed. On Wednes­day, an ACIB source said David Mont­gomery was the ac­count­ing firm which han­dled Ude­cott's fi­nan­cial ac­counts. How­ev­er, the source apol­o­gised yes­ter­day, say­ing that in­for­ma­tion was giv­en in er­ror, and Mont­gomery ac­tu­al­ly dealt with Sun­way's ac­counts. Head of the ACIB Snr Supt Ter­ry Young, who is lead­ing the Ude­cott probe, met with Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard yes­ter­day. Young, how­ev­er, de­clined to com­ment on his dis­cus­sions with Gas­pard which last­ed sev­er­al hours. Young left the DPP's of­fice in an un­marked po­lice SUV and went to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing, a block away.

While leav­ing the build­ing, Young was again pressed by me­dia per­son­nel for a com­ment. He sim­ply smiled and re­peat­ed, "noth­ing, noth­ing, noth­ing at all right now." Dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view last night, Young said his dis­cus­sion with Gas­pard had noth­ing to do with the Ude­cott probe. "We spoke about sen­si­tive mat­ters...The in­quiries are con­tin­u­ing and there are lots of doc­u­ments and in­for­ma­tion to be care­ful­ly analysed along every step of the probe," Young said. A few weeks ago, Gas­pard ad­vised act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, af­ter the DPP re­ceived doc­u­ments from the Con­gress of the Peo­ple which al­leged­ly linked a di­rec­tor of CH to for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart's wife, Sher­rine. On Wednes­day, po­lice raid­ed the of­fices of Ude­cott, Sun­way and Mont­gomery's ac­count­ing firm.

Armed uni­formed po­lice­men were left overnight at Mont­gomery's of­fice at the cor­ner of Gor­don and Aber­crom­by Streets, Port-of-Spain, to en­sure that in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to the po­lice probe was not re­moved from the build­ing. Sources at the ACIB said since their search­es be­gan, they have made no at­tempts to con­tact Hart and his wife, who are out of the coun­try. "All we have is a num­ber for their (Harts') Cas­cade res­i­dence and no one an­swered that phone. So we are yet to ex­e­cute a search war­rant at their home," an­oth­er ACIB source said yes­ter­day. When ques­tioned whether in­ves­ti­ga­tors had ap­proached At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie for a con­tact num­ber for Hart, the of­fi­cer said the ACIB had not spo­ken to the AG in re­la­tion to their probe.

The source al­so dis­missed re­ports that ACIB of­fi­cers raid­ed the Cen­tral Bank and seized doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to their probe. "That nev­er hap­pened...I don't know where that in­for­ma­tion is com­ing from, but we nev­er stepped foot at the Cen­tral Bank," the source said.