Geisha Kow­lessar

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said the probe re­gard­ing Calder Hart is far from over. Ac­cord­ing to the top cop on Fri­day, in­ves­ti­ga­tors were metic­u­lous­ly pe­rus­ing doc­u­ments seized at the home of Hart, for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott). "The in­ves­ti­ga­tion can­not be rushed. It will take a great deal of time be­cause of the amount of pa­per­work in­volved," Philbert said. He said be­cause of the ex­tent of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it could not be de­ter­mined whether the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be wrapped up in the fol­low­ing weeks or months.

"We are tak­ing our time with this in­ves­ti­ga­tion. My of­fi­cers in­ter­viewed Hart be­fore he left the coun­try ear­li­er this week and state­ments were tak­en. "We are work­ing along cer­tain lines and are do­ing so in a care­ful and metic­u­lous man­ner," Philbert as­sured. Sources at the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) yes­ter­day de­scribed the probe as "te­dious" say­ing the pa­per­work was "ex­ten­sive." Hart left the coun­try on Wednes­day af­ter­noon hours af­ter self-ac­claimed so­cial ac­tivist Ish­mael Samad went to Hart's home in St Ann's.

Samad was charged af­ter he al­leged­ly tried to break down Hart's front gate with a sledge­ham­mer on Wednes­day. Samad, who told po­lice he was go­ing to make a cit­i­zen's ar­rest, ap­peared be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate on Thurs­day charged with ma­li­cious

dam­age. On March 5, Hart was giv­en 24 hours to re­sign af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie who told him Hart might have a case to an­swer aris­ing out of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor.