Fran­cis Joseph

In a fi­nal at­tempt to con­vince the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry that its op­er­a­tions were above board, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) in­sists that the at­tacks on the com­pa­ny were po­lit­i­cal in na­ture. Ude­cott pro­duced a 210-page re­port, dat­ed March 1, to Pro­fes­sor John Uff and Com­mis­sion­er Desmond Thorn­hill, in which its lead coun­sel, An­drew God­dard, QC, wrote: "The com­mis­sion needs to al­so recog­nise that a pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the war on Ude­cott is to dam­age the Prime Min­is­ter by dam­ag­ing Ude­cott. "The cam­paign against Ude­cott is thus po­lit­i­cal in all sens­es and re­spects," he said. "Row­ley (the for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter), it is sure­ly ob­vi­ous to all, is fight­ing for his po­lit­i­cal sur­vival. He has staked his whole po­lit­i­cal fu­ture on seek­ing to dam­age the Prime Min­is­ter. "And, his cho­sen method of at­tack is to ac­cuse Ude­cott, in whom the ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter ap­pears to have con­fi­dence, of cor­rup­tion at every turn, us­ing the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege where he can, and of­ten ob­tain­ing un­crit­i­cal press cov­er­age."

God­dard said it was note­wor­thy to show that un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion, Row­ley had to ad­mit that his al­le­ga­tion that Ude­cott had uni­lat­er­al­ly in­tro­duced a ho­tel el­e­ment in­to the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) with­out min­is­te­r­i­al ap­proval, was false. He al­so said Row­ley with­drew his al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in re­spect to the first Cus­toms and Ex­cise build­ing ten­der. In his fi­nal sub­mis­sions, God­dard point­ed out that Ude­cott, its board and staff, co-op­er­at­ed with the Uff Com­mis­sion. "Notwith­stand­ing the co-op­er­a­tion which it has demon­strat­ed, Ude­cott has felt that it has not been treat­ed fair­ly or equal­ly by the Com­mis­sion, and is con­cerned that the Com­mis­sion may have been in­flu­enced by the vo­cif­er­ous cam­paign waged against Ude­cott by its crit­ics, to think that it is a rogue or­gan­i­sa­tion," he said. "Ude­cott asks that the com­mis­sion ex­am­ine crit­i­cal­ly the al­le­ga­tions made against Ude­cott and tests what ev­i­dence there is in sup­port there­of, rather than sim­ply ac­cept­ing that there is or must be some sub­stance to the com­plaint be­cause it has been made and re­peat­ed."

God­dard dis­tanced Ude­cott from the al­le­ga­tion that Ude­cott had pre-de­ter­mined that it was go­ing to award the con­tract for the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba to Hafeez Kara­math Lim­it­ed. "This is, of course, an ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tion...It amounts to an al­le­ga­tion of fraud, dis­hon­esty and cor­rup­tion," God­dard said. "One would hope that coun­sel for a par­ty would not ad­vance such an al­le­ga­tion light­ly, and with­out hav­ing first analysed the ev­i­dence in or­der to be sure that such an al­le­ga­tion could prop­er­ly be made, with­out abus­ing the priv­i­lege that coun­sel has to make ac­cu­sa­tions of im­pro­pri­ety un­der the cloak of im­mu­ni­ty." God­dard said he hoped that the Com­mis­sion would not al­low such al­le­ga­tions to be ad­vanced with­out re­quir­ing of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) that its coun­sel state pre­cise­ly what are the al­le­ga­tions.

"What is it that each or any of them is al­leged to have done which was fraud­u­lent, dis­hon­est or cor­rupt, or amount­ed to a sham?" God­dard asked. The re­port of the com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to be hand­ed over to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards be­fore East­er. Uff is in Lon­don putting the fi­nal touch­es to the re­port. The com­mis­sion in­quired in­to the lo­cal con­struc­tion in­dus­try, Ude­cott, and the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project.