Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UDe­COTT) Frank Barnes has re­signed.

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young con­firmed this at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, the last for the year.

“Yes, I un­der­stand that Mr Barnes has re­signed. I haven’t seen his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion,” Young said.

Young al­so con­firmed a Guardian Me­dia re­port on Mon­day that UDe­COTT is now un­der the watch of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed the de­tails of the Gazette of No­vem­ber 22, 2018, in which Row­ley di­rect­ed the Pres­i­dent to move UDe­COTT from un­der the am­bit of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and place it un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion pub­lished in the Gazette, Row­ley re­voked re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for UDe­COTT from Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon and trans­ferred it to the OPM.

The move now gives Row­ley re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the State’s mega-project man­age­ment com­pa­ny.

“The move­ment of Ude­COTT from the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing... Ude­COTT is now di­rect­ly un­der the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter,” Young said.

Young al­so de­nied that Barnes’ sud­den and sur­pris­ing res­ig­na­tion had any­thing to do with the de­lay in the de­liv­ery of the Red House project.

Guardian Me­dia learned that just be­fore Barnes’ res­ig­na­tion, he was faced with ques­tions from the hi­er­ar­chy about the leak of in­for­ma­tion to the me­dia in­volv­ing the Glob­al Fi­nance loan of $180 mil­lion to UDe­COTT.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Barnes yes­ter­day about the rea­son for his res­ig­na­tion but he would on­ly say that he “could not speak at the time.”