Richard Lord

Claims of a link be­tween sacked trade min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, and ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of NH In­ter­na­tion­al, Emile Elias, sparked an up­roar on the first day of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Lo­cal Con­struc­tion Sec­tor and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) at the Win­sure Build­ing in Port-of-Spain. Com­mis­sion chair­man John Uff and oth­er com­mis­sion­ers got down to work yes­ter­day morn­ing, but were un­able to hear open­ing state­ments un­til 1.30 in the af­ter­noon.

This as at­tor­neys Frank Solomon, SC, and An­drew God­dard, QC, who are rep­re­sent­ing Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, and Ude­cott, re­spec­tive­ly, ar­gued that there should not be open­ing state­ments un­til the writ­ten sub­mis­sion pre­sent­ed by Dr Row­ley and the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil was "sift­ed out," be­cause they con­tained defam­a­to­ry state­ments. Solomon de­scribed Row­ley's writ­ten sub­mis­sions to the com­mis­sion as "non­sense" and garbage." Uff put off his rul­ing on that mat­ter un­til 4 pm, af­ter two sep­a­rate meet­ings on the mat­ter. The hear­ing was sus­pend­ed at 11.30, in the first in­stance, and then at 3.30, to al­low the mat­ters to be dis­cussed.

But the up­roar came as God­dard was mak­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion. He told the com­mis­sion: "You know that there is a link be­tween Dr Row­ley and Mr Elias." This forced Row­ley's at­tor­ney, Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, to jump to his feet, ac­cus­ing God­dard of seek­ing to de­fame his client. But God­dard main­tained his claim. He went on to re­call the con­tro­ver­sial Lan­date hous­ing project in To­ba­go. "And you are aware of the fact that Dr Row­ley has a ben­e­fi­cial in­ter­est in the project his wife is car­ry­ing out..?" This again caused Pe­ter­son to raise strong ob­jec­tion. At this point, Chair­man Uff told God­dard he was deal­ing with mat­ters out of the scope of the pro­ceed­ings.

Row­ley, who was present, was heard lat­er telling some­one: "The State is at work; the State is at work." God­dard was seek­ing to force the com­mis­sion to give Elias a 72-hour dead­line to sub­mit his state­ment in the mat­ter. He said Elias had in­di­cat­ed that he would not be able to at­tend yes­ter­day's sched­uled start of the en­quiry, be­cause he was sup­posed to be out of the coun­try on busi­ness. God­dard said Elias was not out of the coun­try and should be forced to make his writ­ten sub­mis­sion by Thurs­day. But at­tor­ney for the JCC, Alvin Fitz­patrick, SC, who al­so in­di­cat­ed that he was rep­re­sent­ing Elias, said while Ude­cott had re­peat­ed­ly failed to meet dead­lines for sub­mis­sion, it was now set­ting dead­lines for Elias.