Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

One of the lawyers in­volved in the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the State-owned Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T Lim­it­ed (Ude­cott) said yes­ter­day Ude­cott had not in­di­cat­ed it would file an ap­pli­ca­tion in the High Court to re­scind de­ci­sions halt­ing the in­quiry from pro­duc­ing its find­ings. He added, "Well, the po­si­tion, as stat­ed in the (Ude­cott's) press re­lease, is that the lawyers for Ude­cott are go­ing to be en­gag­ing in dis­cus­sions with the lawyers for the com­mis­sion­ers with a view, first, to see if they can agree on ad­just­ments to the con­sent or­der. "And if they can agree, then yes, the in­ten­tion is to go back to court and ask the court to ad­just its or­der of last Fri­day in ac­cor­dance with what­ev­er can be ar­rived."

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, the at­tor­ney, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, re­spond­ed to ques­tions about a state­ment from Ude­cott that its le­gal team planned to re-ex­am­ine the con­sent or­der be­tween the le­gal teams for the com­mis­sion­ers and Ude­cott. The or­der stat­ed in part: "There will be no re­in­state­ment or re­sump­tion of the in­quiry by way of fur­ther hear­ings or the re­cep­tion of ev­i­dence, and/or prepa­ra­tion or pub­li­ca­tion or dis­sem­i­na­tion of any re­port(s), un­til the date fixed here­in for the hear­ing of the sub­stan­tive ap­pli­ca­tion." The lawyer said he had not had con­tact with Ude­cott's le­gal team to dis­cuss changes to the or­der. "I do not know (when they would meet with us). I do not have a clue to in­di­cate what their re­spec­tive avail­abil­i­ty are," he said.

He al­so de­nied state­ments from Ude­cott di­rec­tor An­tho­ny Cher­ry that the at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the com­mis­sion­ers were the ones who sought the stay in­to the pro­ceed­ings of the in­quiry. Cher­ry said dur­ing a Ude­cott news con­fer­ence on Mon­day, that the com­mis­sion's Eng­lish so­lic­i­tors, Charles Rus­sell and Com­pa­ny, had giv­en the un­der­tak­ing, in a let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 1, that the com­mis­sion would not re­sume, and that the hear­ing of the ju­di­cial re­view mat­ter be pushed back by four months (Feb­ru­ary). "The lawyers for the (Prof John) Uff Com­mis­sion re­quest­ed the stay? Well, no, that is not ac­cu­rate but there is the or­der that was a con­sent or­der. It means that both par­ties have agreed to the or­der but it is not the truth to say that the Uff lawyers re­quest­ed the stay," he said.