Fran­cis Joseph

Mem­bers of the Board of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) are not go­ing to re­sign, de­spite calls from var­i­ous quar­ters in the so­ci­ety. As far as they are con­cerned, there is no cor­rup­tion with­in Ude­cott. They de­clared, how­ev­er, they were not proud of the $700-mil­lion Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba, but if they got the chance to do it again, it would be done dif­fer­ent­ly. A hasti­ly-arranged news con­fer­ence was called at Ude­cott's of­fices on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, in wake of mount­ing crit­i­cisms of the state com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, miss­ing from the line-up was con­tro­ver­sial ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart.

Deputy chair­man, Dr Kr­ish­na Ba­hadoors­ingh, said Hart was called away at the last minute to at­tend an­oth­er meet­ing. Ba­hadoors­ingh host­ed the news con­fer­ence with oth­er board mem­bers: An­tho­ny Cher­ry, Michael An­nisette, and Wen­dell Dot­tin. The Ude­cott board did not go in­to the news con­fer­ence with­out back-up. They had their lawyers: Frank Solomon, SC, Bran­don Primus, and Richard Free­man. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that there had been calls for the board to step down, Ba­hadoors­ingh said there was a dis­tinc­tion to be made be­tween Ude­cott's per­for­mance of its gov­ern­men­tal tasks and mis­sion to man­age ur­ban de­vel­op­ment, on the one hand, and its rights and oblig­a­tions to de­fend it­self against charges of im­prop­er pro­ce­dures or cor­rup­tion, on the oth­er.

Ba­hadoors­ingh added: "Ude­cott is to­tal­ly obe­di­ent to the wish­es of the Gov­ern­ment in its de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme, while at the same time be­ing res­olute­ly in­de­pen­dent of its right to de­fend it­self against al­le­ga­tions which go to the in­tegri­ty and char­ac­ter of the com­pa­ny and of its of­fi­cials and em­ploy­ees."

The deputy chair­man said the de­ci­sion to file for ju­di­cial re­view of the Uff Com­mis­sion was an ex­am­ple of Ude­cott ex­er­cis­ing the right to de­fend it­self.

With­out ex­press­ing opin­ions on the ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter be­fore the High Court, Ba­hadoors­ingh said those who sat on the Uff Com­mis­sion of In­quiry must be free of bias and al­so ap­pear to be free of bias. "They must per­son­al­ly be free of any con­flict of in­ter­est, and if there is any sug­ges­tion of a con­flict of in­ter­est, it will be their oblig­a­tion to make full dis­clo­sure of this." Ba­hadoors­ingh point­ed out that dur­ing the sev­en months of hear­ing, one com­mis­sion­er (Is­rael Khan) had been re­moved, and an­oth­er (Ken­neth Sir­ju) had dis­closed a con­flict of in­ter­est. He point­ed out that Ude­cott had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pub­lic hear­ings, and that Hart had ap­peared un­der oath and sub­ject­ed him­self to cross-ex­am­i­na­tion on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions.

"It is, there­fore, whol­ly in­ac­cu­rate and gross­ly un­fair to sug­gest that Ude­cott's at­ti­tude to the in­quiry has been any­thing, but co-op­er­a­tive and oblig­ing be­yond the call of du­ty," the deputy chair­man added. Ba­hadoors­ingh said there had been sug­ges­tions that the board should re­sign. "The Board of Ude­cott is sat­is­fied that it is–and had been–per­form­ing its fidu­cia­ry du­ties faith­ful­ly and dili­gent­ly, and no mem­ber has any in­ten­tion of con­ced­ing to any such de­mands." He said the board had con­fi­dence in the lead­er­ship, com­pe­tence and in­tegri­ty of Calder Hart. Cher­ry, an at­tor­ney, said Ude­cott nev­er sought a stay of the pro­ceed­ings of the Uff Com­mis­sion. He read from a let­ter from the com­mis­sion's Eng­lish so­lic­i­tors, Charles Rus­sell and Co, which stat­ed the com­mis­sion had giv­en an un­der­tak­ing that it had no in­ten­tion of pro­ceed­ing with the in­quiry, and that the ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter should not be heard for the next four months.

Al­though At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said he met with Ude­cott's lawyers last week, Ba­hadoors­ingh said board mem­bers were not part of that dis­cus­sion.

On the is­sue of the ju­di­cial re­view case, Ba­hadoors­ingh said the board re­ceived no spe­cif­ic di­rec­tive from ei­ther Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, or the line min­is­ter. Ad­mit­ting that the board was not proud of the Tarou­ba project, Ba­hadoors­ingh said no one was talk­ing about the $1.8 bil­lion wa­ter­front project, which was fin­ished with­in bud­get and on time. He said he, as a se­nior de­vel­op­er, de­cid­ed to give some­thing back by be­ing a Ude­cott mem­ber.

"If there is the slight­est per­cep­tion of any­thing be­ing wrong, we would not be here. As far as I know, there is no cor­rup­tion."