?Lo­cal con­trac­tor Emile Elias yes­ter­day launched a bit­ter at­tack on Cana­di­an foren­sic ac­coun­tant Robert Lindquist, ac­cus­ing him of be­ing par­ty to "an abuse of pow­er in­sti­gat­ed by a po­lit­i­cal and per­son­al vendet­ta" in car­ry­ing out his lat­est as­sign­ment to re­open the Lan­date mat­ter.

In a let­ter ad­dressed to "Dear Bob" in care of the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain, Elias de­scribed the new probe as "noth­ing more than an­oth­er scan­dalous waste of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, ex­act­ly like the foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to "phan­tom TT$" at the Cleaver Heights Hous­ing Project." Elias, the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of NHIC which is one of the coun­try's largest in­dige­nous con­struc­tion firms, not­ed that Lindquist had been giv­en his "lat­est as­sign­ment" to in­ves­ti­gate the Lan­date mat­ter by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, in whose of­fice the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­tiga­tive Bu­reau op­er­ates. The Lan­date mat­ter in­volved al­le­ga­tions that NHIC trans­ferred con­struc­tion ma­te­r­i­al from the site of the Scar­bor­ough Hos­pi­tal to a land de­vel­op­ment in Ma­son Hall owned by for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and his wife Sharon. Ac­cord­ing to Elias, those al­le­ga­tions have been in­ves­ti­gat­ed by a com­mis­sion of en­quiry, by the po­lice, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and by Nipdec, which was the Gov­ern­ment's agent in the con­struc­tion of the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal. None of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions found any­thing un­to­ward, said Elias.

In the let­ter, Elias wrote: "Lan­date has been in­ves­ti­gat­ed ad nau­se­am, at tremen­dous ex­pense to our suf­fer­ing tax­pay­ers, first­ly by a com­mis­sion of en­quiry at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of some $15 mil­lion, and sec­ond­ly by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) which in­ves­ti­gat­ed the same is­sues, in par­al­lel, at an es­ti­mat­ed cost to tax­pay­ers (in­clud­ing the High Court costs) of some $6 mil­lion. "The com­mis­sion's mis­con­duct dur­ing that in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in which I ap­pear to be 'col­lat­er­al dam­age,' re­sult­ed in it be­ing very pub­licly cas­ti­gat­ed by the High Court, apol­o­gis­ing to Dr Row­ley, and re­sign­ing in dis­grace," Elias said. "Fur­ther­more, Nipdec, un­der the chair­man­ship of the now dis­graced Calder Hart, was al­so a par­ty to this on­go­ing vendet­ta and waste of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey and had al­so raised the 'Lan­date is­sue' but in the end was forced to con­cede that all ma­te­r­i­al on the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal site had been ful­ly and prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for." In re­sponse to the is­sues raised by Elias, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, said: "Last Sep­tem­ber, all out­stand­ing cor­rup­tion in­ves­ti­ga­tions were placed in the hands of Mr Lindquist.

"It is my un­der­stand­ing that Mr Elias has been co-op­er­at­ing with Mr Lindquist since then," the AG said. "No re­port has been sub­mit­ted on that as­pect of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion by Mr Lindquist. On­ly to­day, I was ad­vised by the DPP that he in­tends to pur­sue a par­tic­u­lar course of ac­tion in­de­pen­dent of those in­ves­ti­ga­tions." In his let­ter, Elias quot­ed ex­ten­sive­ly from a state­ment that Je­re­mie made to Par­lia­ment on April 7, 2006, in which the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al was sharply crit­i­cal of the role played by for­mer MP Gan­ga Singh in call­ing for the com­mis­sion of en­quiry in­to Lan­date. The Elias let­ter was copied to the DPP, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and all me­dia.