Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says an un­sani­tised copy of the Re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and the con­struc­tion sec­tor will be laid in the Sen­ate on Tues­day.

He con­firmed that dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

The re­port was pre­sent­ed by com­mis­sion chair­man Prof John Uff on Mon­day to Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning sub­se­quent­ly re­ceived the re­port. "The Gov­ern­ment does not in­tend to sani­tise the re­port. The re­port is go­ing to be laid as is on Tues­day next," Je­re­mie added. He said cit­i­zens should await the pub­lic re­lease of the re­port be­fore try­ing to de­ter­mine what ac­tion would be re­quired. Je­re­mie said, how­ev­er, that the Gov­ern­ment had ac­cept­ed the re­port. The AG al­so de­nied any truth in me­dia re­ports which claimed that the po­lice were be­ing frus­trat­ed in their ef­forts to reach for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, who re­signed and left the coun­try af­ter dis­cus­sions with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning last month. Two crim­i­nal probes have been ini­ti­at­ed against Hart. Je­re­mie said foren­sic ac­coun­tant Robert Lindquist is lead­ing one re­lat­ing to two projects, the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um at Torou­ba and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain. The oth­er is be­ing car­ried out on the ad­vice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions re­lat­ing to al­le­ga­tions of per­jury by Hart.

In con­firm­ing that Hart did not meet the ex­pect­ed March 31 date for his re­turn to Port-of-Spain, the AG said the for­mer top ex­ec­u­tive was un­der no oblig­a­tion to re­turn home. "Mr Hart is a pri­vate cit­i­zen. He is un­der no oblig­a­tion to come un­til the po­lice re­quire him. They do not re­quire him," Je­re­mie added in re­sponse to ques­tions yes­ter­day. He said, how­ev­er, he had been in "reg­u­lar con­tact" with act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert and the se­nior in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) on the mat­ter.

"They have both ad­vised me that at this time there is no need to speak with Mr Hart (and) as such Mr Hart had not been re­quest­ed to re­turn to speak with the po­lice," the AG added. He said me­dia re­ports about Hart's where­abouts not be­ing known were false. Asked if he knew where Hart was now stay­ing, Je­re­mie said: "Yes, we do. He has in­di­cat­ed to us, through his at­tor­neys, de­tails as to his con­tacts and his where­abouts and he has in­di­cat­ed a will­ing­ness to as­sist the po­lice as and when the po­lice re­quire as­sis­tance." The AG added: "Mr Hart is an or­di­nary cit­i­zen in re­spect of whom there has been a great deal of spec­u­la­tion." He not­ed that the po­lice probes were not yet com­plet­ed "so that there can be no war­rant to do any­thing with Mr Hart at this point in time. We can on­ly go as quick­ly as the po­lice can car­ry us." The AG was asked to re­spond to ques­tions on the state of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the au­then­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ments sup­plied to po­lice by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), which al­leged­ly con­firmed that Hart was re­lat­ed to two of­fi­cials of Sun­way, a com­pa­ny which got a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract to con­struct the Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers.

Hart has re­peat­ed­ly de­nied be­ing re­lat­ed to any of the of­fi­cials at the com­pa­ny. Je­re­mie said: "The Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty and In­ter­pol have made a se­ries of re­quests of their coun­ter­part agen­cies in Malaysia. I think that there were sev­en re­quests. "As of yes­ter­day, to my knowl­edge they had re­ceived in­for­ma­tion with re­spect to four limbs of the re­quest, so that means that three limbs are out­stand­ing. That is as much as I can say on that mat­ter."