Richard Lord

Some 24-hours af­ter new Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard or­dered a po­lice probe in­to al­le­ga­tions of wrong­do­ing by for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) Calder Hart, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie said a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Hart be­gan since last year. Je­re­mie said Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and him­self were aware of the probe, which was be­ing con­duct­ed by Cana­di­an foren­sic ex­pert Robert Lindquist and in­clud­ed an of­fi­cer from the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (Sautt) and David West, of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty, which op­er­ates with the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. Je­re­mie made the rev­e­la­tions dur­ing a hasti­ly-arranged news con­fer­ence at his Ca­bil­do Cham­bers of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

He said Lindquist's terms of ref­er­ence in­clud­ed:

1. the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers in Port of Spain–which is be­ing con­struct­ed by Sun­way, a Malaysian com­pa­ny in which Hart is said to have fam­i­ly links with two di­rec­tors.

2. The Tarou­ba De­vel­op­ment project, which in­cludes the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Sta­di­um in south Trinidad.

"While the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to await the find­ings of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor be­fore ini­ti­at­ing ac­tion, once Ude­cott com­menced le­gal ac­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2009, which had the po­ten­tial to de­lay or frus­trate the Com­mis­sion's work, al­ready thrown in­to doubt by the fail­ure to gazette the com­mis­sion, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al thought it nec­es­sary to pro­tect the pub­lic's in­ter­est," Je­re­mie said. "A crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was there­fore launched on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2009, with the ap­point­ment of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Bob Lindquist and with the as­sis­tance of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T." Je­re­mie said the in­ves­ti­ga­tors had been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly and a pre­lim­i­nary re­port was al­ready sub­mit­ted to him. He al­so said af­ter last week's pub­li­ca­tion of doc­u­ments which pur­port­ed to con­firm links be­tween Hart and of­fi­cials of Sun­way, he sought and re­ceived writ­ten le­gal opin­ion at 9 am on Fri­day.

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple re­leased doc­u­ments to the me­dia which claimed that Hart had di­rect fam­i­ly ties to two di­rec­tors of Sun­way. Hart has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any links to of­fi­cials of the com­pa­ny. Je­re­mie said he "im­me­di­ate­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the DPP and the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice on Fri­day last and ad­vised them of the need to pur­sue cer­tain ur­gent lines of in­quiry." He said he al­so gave cer­tain ad­vice to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning on the de­vel­op­ment. He ad­mit­ted that his ad­vice was based on the as­sump­tion that the doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence that was pub­lished in the news­pa­per was au­then­tic. He said a pre­lim­i­nary re­port on the mat­ter had al­ready been sub­mit­ted and a fi­nal re­port was be­ing worked on.

Je­re­mie said the Prime Min­is­ter would have spo­ken with Hart, and the for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man re­signed and left the coun­try the next day. He said Hart was due to re­turn to T&T be­fore the end of the month. "The ques­tion which law en­force­ment has to de­ter­mine to move for­ward with any sort of charge is whether or not the doc­u­ments are au­then­tic," he said. "That is a func­tion of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and that is all I can say for the time be­ing... the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty is do­ing its work. He said the re­port was sub­mit­ted to him last week.

No need to in­ves­ti­gate Gua­napo church – AG

And Je­re­mie says he does not see the need to in­ves­ti­gate the con­struc­tion of a church at the heights of Gua­napo in Ari­ma. He said the church is owned by a pri­vate en­ti­ty and the Shang­hai Con­struc­tion Group was a pri­vate com­pa­ny.

He was asked to com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day. He said: "So that, no. I do not see a need to in­ves­ti­gate the church. I don't think there is suf­fi­cient (ev­i­dence), cer­tain­ly from where I stand."