Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In­ves­ti­ga­tors may have to ex­tra­dite for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) John Calder Hart, as he has moved to block crim­i­nal charges by sev­er­ing all ties from this ju­ris­dic­tion. The shock­ing new twist comes on the heels of the whop­ping $3,400,000 mil­lion sell­ing price tag on Hart's sprawl­ing man­sion at #No 6 De Li­ma Road, Sec­ond Av­enue, Cas­cade. A deed dat­ed May 20, pre­pared by at­tor­ney Mark Laquis of Pol­lon­ais, Blanc, de la Bastide & Jacelon of Pem­broke Street, Port-of-Spain was de­liv­ered anony­mous­ly to the Trinidad Guardian Head Of­fice on Fri­day evening, in an un­marked en­ve­lope. The doc­u­ment stat­ed, that Hart, who is list­ed as a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor and his wife Sher­rine have agreed to sell the man­sion at the price of $3.4mil­lion. The shock­ing de­vel­op­ment is not sit­ting well with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan who told the Sun­day Guardian he would be ur­gent­ly meet­ing with the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard for di­rec­tions on how to pro­ceed on the mat­ter.

"I am ex­treme­ly con­cerned about this de­vel­op­ment be­cause crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion is on­ly half of the jus­tice to which the peo­ple this coun­try may be en­ti­tled. The oth­er half has to do with the re­cov­ery of ill�got­ten gains. It is on the lat­ter score that the sell­ing of as­sets be­comes a re­al con­cern. The for­mer gov­ern­ment had made it clear that Hart was al­lowed to leave our shores be­cause his where­abouts were known at all times. In light of this de­vel­op­ment I shall re­quest an ur­gent meet­ing with the DPP be­cause the of­fice of the AG has no in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers and the guid­ance of the DPP maybe need­ed so that the po­lice can do what is nec­es­sary. In these cir­cum­stances, de­pend­ing on the stage of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the state of ev­i­dence peo­ple should not be al­lowed to make a mock­ery of the sys­tem. Ur­gent ex­pe­di­tion is need­ed in mat­ters like these."

Ram­lo­gan fur­ther added that he is con­tem­plat­ing new leg­is­la­tion with a view of ex­pe­dit­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and the es­tab­lish­ment of a spe­cial court to fast track crim­i­nal tri­als in­volv­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials who are ac­cused of fraud against the pub­lic purse. The three-storey man­sion that is sit­u­at­ed on 4,761 ft com­pris­es of five bed­rooms, five and a half bath­rooms, tele­vi­sion/fam­i­ly room, kitchen, laun­dry and car­port/garage. On the ground and first floors of the man­sion there are: a liv­ing/din­ing room, porch/bal­cony, two stand­ing show­ers, six face basins, and five wa­ter clos­ets. This is en­hanced with a swim­ming pool mea­sur­ing 16feet by 27feet. How­ev­er, a val­u­a­tion re­port by Lin­den Scott & As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed stat­ed while the man­sion is out­fit­ted with spe­cial­ly de­signed fea­tures and ap­pears to be in good struc­tur­al and dec­o­ra­tive re­pair there is need for up­grade works.

It is sug­gest­ed that the pur­chas­er will have to clean, paint and up­grade the mas­ter bath­room. The re­port al­so rec­om­mend­ed that ceil­ing tiles will have to be changed and oth­er work is need­ed. In ad­di­tion, the re­port stat­ed that a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or be re­tained to pro­vide a pre­cise as­sess­ment of the cur­rent re­in­state­ment cost for in­sur­ance pur­pos­es. A lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the mat­ter ad­mit­ted to be­ing sur­prised by the move, on­ly say­ing: "This is very in­ter­est­ing. It is def­i­nite­ly a sign that he in­tends to cut ties with this ju­ris­dic­tion. How­ev­er, if he is sell­ing out it does not mean that he is not com­ing back. He may have to be ex­tra­dit­ed in the event that he is want­ed by the po­lice for a par­tic­u­lar of­fence and re­fus­es to come back vol­un­tar­i­ly. I am very sur­prised by this new de­vel­op­ment."

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact one of Hart's at­tor­neys De­vesh Ma­haraj and Ude­cott com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ist Rox­anne Sta­plethon-Whims proved fu­tile yes­ter­day.

FLASH­BACK

Since Hart was forced out of of­fice on March 5 he fled the coun­try in the com­pa­ny of his wife Sher­rine and daugh­ter Ling Lee Singh, days af­ter sub­mit­ting his res­ig­na­tion. His two sons Chase and Ross re­mained at the man­sion with the maid and care­tak­ers. His res­ig­na­tion came days af­ter doc­u­ments al­leged­ly linked his Malaysian-born wife and a com­pa­ny, which was award­ed an $820 mil­lion con­tract by the Ude­cott board. He al­so stepped down from four State boards � the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny, The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Ltd and the Home Mort­gage Bank. The UFF Re­port stat­ed that Hart was wield­ing more pow­er than some politi­cians. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning met with the then AG John Je­re­mie who in­formed him that Hart might have a case to an­swer aris­ing out of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry. There has been an out­cry that Hart may not re­turn to T&T if he is faced with crim­i­nal charges.