Prof John Uff has de­clined to di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion in the bulky re­port which he pre­sent­ed to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at Pres­i­dent's House yes­ter­day.

Uff did ad­mit, how­ev­er, that there were 91 rec­om­men­da­tions sub­mit­ted in the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott), and the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project. But the T&T Guardian learnt that the com­mis­sion­ers spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time deal­ing with Ude­cott and its for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, the tes­ti­mo­ny he gave un­der oath at the en­quiry, the treat­ment of for­mer Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the way the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) op­er­at­ed, the un­fin­ished Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Tarou­ba, the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), the Cleaver Heights hous­ing project, the op­er­a­tions of Ude­cott and the way mon­ey was spent on cer­tain projects. The com­mis­sion­ers, sources re­vealed, made a num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions for the im­prove­ment of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and the ten­der­ing pro­ce­dure with­in the in­dus­try.

Sources re­vealed that the com­mis­sion­ers, Uff and Desmond Thorn­hill, ac­knowl­edged that they were not a court of law, but made rec­om­men­da­tions that could lead to prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the T&T au­thor­i­ties, which could lead to crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions in cer­tain mat­ters which came be­fore them. Af­ter Pres­i­dent Richards pe­rused the re­port, he would hand it over to Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning for ac­tion. It is ex­pect­ed that Man­ning will for­ward it to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who will cer­tain­ly call in the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB), based on what is con­tained in the re­port, sources re­vealed. Uff sum­moned a news con­fer­ence af­ter he hand­ed over his re­port to the Pres­i­dent. "I gath­er this is break­ing with tra­di­tion. It is not the usu­al prac­tice to do this af­ter the de­liv­ery of the re­port. "My tra­di­tion else­where is one that af­ter the de­liv­ery of the re­port, you fade qui­et­ly away. I will fade qui­et­ly away to­mor­row." At the news con­fer­ence in Win­sure build­ing, Port-of-Spain, Uff ad­dressed the is­sue that af­ter nine months of hear­ings, the com­mis­sion heard that the in­quiry was not gazetted. But af­ter the as­sent­ing to of the Val­i­da­tion Act, Uff re­vealed that the ev­i­dence giv­en be­fore the com­mis­sion should be ad­mis­si­ble in a court of law, whether civ­il or crim­i­nal. He said the pro­ceed­ings of the in­quiry could be tak­en for­ward to an­oth­er place.

Uff is hope­ful that the full re­port would be pub­lished at some time. He point­ed out that in the Unit­ed King­dom, the com­mis­sion of en­quiry had the au­thor­i­ty to pub­lish the re­port. Asked if he felt the se­cre­cy could lead to some ma­nip­u­la­tion of the re­port, Uff re­spond­ed: "The re­port will be pub­lished at some time. I hope it is pub­lished in full. The re­port is the re­port; it is ei­ther pub­lished or not pub­lished. "The re­port can­not be changed in any way. It is the re­port of the com­mis­sion­ers, noth­ing else."

The British QC said there was a great deal of ma­te­r­i­al con­cern­ing Ude­cott; Ude­cott as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, plus the num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant Ude­cott projects, some of which will be sub­ject to de­tailed in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He said Ude­cott drew more at­ten­tion and had more at­ten­tion in the re­port. "We just have to wait un­til the re­port is pub­li­cised."

Com­mis­sion­ers face dis­trac­tions

Ad­mit­ting that the com­mis­sion­ers faced dis­trac­tions from time to time, Uff said the ma­jor dis­trac­tion in this in­quiry was the be­hav­iour of Ude­cott. "What was chal­leng­ing in this in­quiry was that Ude­cott de­cid­ed to pre-empt their po­ten­tial chal­lenge to what was in the re­port, by chal­leng­ing the com­mis­sion­ers on ap­par­ent bias. "That is a mat­ter which caused me some con­cern, be­cause in or­der to an­swer those ac­cu­sa­tions, po­ten­tial­ly led me in­to a bat­tle with Ude­cott, which sim­ply could not take place, in or­der for me to main­tain my po­si­tion of in­de­pen­dence and even-hand­ed­ness. "My orig­i­nal in­cli­na­tion was not to de­fend the pro­ceed­ings. Leave them to take their own course, rather than to swear to an af­fi­davit in re­sponse. "There was al­so an ap­pli­ca­tion that I should at­tend be­fore the High Court to give oral ev­i­dence. I re­fused to do that, be­cause that would lead me, in­evitably, to de­fend the com­mis­sion, so I al­lowed it to take its own course. "Yes, that was cer­tain­ly a dis­trac­tion, high­ly un­usu­al." Uff said the com­mis­sion­ers were not aware that there were oth­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions be­ing un­der­tak­en against Ude­cott.