Richard Lord

Min­utes af­ter say­ing for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Calder Hart was not guilty of any­thing, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, Jear­lean John as the new chair­man of Ude­cott, re­plac­ing Hart, who re­signed last week. Man­ning told a hasti­ly-arranged news con­fer­ence at his St Clair of­fice yes­ter­day that de­spite the many al­le­ga­tions against Hart, the for­mer Ude­cott boss was not guilty of any­thing. He took ques­tions on the is­sue in­volv­ing Hart, who re­signed from Ude­cott last week af­ter pub­li­ca­tion which claimed that Hart was re­lat­ed to two di­rec­tors of CH De­vel­op­ment (now Sun­way)–a com­pa­ny which was award­ed a $368.9 mil­lion con­tract by Ude­cott to con­struct the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­ers. Hart de­nied while on oath in the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Con­struc­tion Sec­tor that he was re­lat­ed to the of­fi­cials.

Man­ning said he was told by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie last Fri­day that Hart may have a case to an­swer. He said he sub­se­quent­ly met with Hart, who then ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion. Man­ning said for that rea­son and al­so be­cause of cer­tain pub­lic dis­clo­sures, he had a con­ver­sa­tion with Hart. "Fol­low­ing that con­ver­sa­tion with Mr Hart, he de­cid­ed that the best thing to do in all the cir­cum­stances would be to step away, al­low the in­ves­ti­ga­tions to go on and to give him a chance, at the ap­pro­pri­ate time, to clear his name, which I imag­ine he is now in the process of seek­ing to do," the Prime Min­is­ter said. The PM said it was not nec­es­sary to ask Hart to re­sign. Man­ning was asked if he felt Hart was hound­ed out of of­fice, a claim made by Plan­ning, Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Dick Forde.

He re­spond­ed quick­ly: "You don't have to be a rock­et sci­en­tist to see what has hap­pened. When I read the news­pa­pers, some­times I won­der what is the crime? I would like some­body to tell me of what is Mr Hart guilty as of now? Would some­body be kind enough to tell me? He is guilty of what? I would like to know right now. The PM said it was not for him to de­ter­mine in­no­cence or guilt in the mat­ter in­volv­ing Hart. He said the Gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to es­tab­lish a new or­der in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, via Ude­cott. "In that ca­pac­i­ty (ob­jec­tive) Ude­cott has stepped on the toes and corns of some very pow­er­ful peo­ple in this coun­try," he said. Man­ning said the Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands that "the bat­tle is not al­ways what it ap­pears to be but there may well be oth­er agen­das in this mat­ter." He said he was not get­ting val­ue for mon­ey from the lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor.

Man­ning con­firmed that he was aware of the crim­i­nal probe be­ing con­duct­ed on Hart by foren­sic ac­coun­tant Robert Lindquist, since Sep­tem­ber last year. He said such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which was com­mis­sioned by AG Je­re­mie "was a rou­tine thing." Asked why he con­tin­ued to speak favourably about Hart in pub­lic de­spite the fact that he was aware of a probe, Man­ning said it would be a ma­jor er­ror to ac­cept that some­one was guilty be­fore it was proven by the au­thor­i­ties. "I was ac­knowl­edg­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of Mr Hart in terms of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment," Man­ning said. "The state­ments which I made are state­ments by which I stand," the PM said. Man­ning said the en­tire mat­ter in­volv­ing Hart was not over and it may not be the ap­pro­pri­ate time for any­one to claim vic­to­ry.

He was re­spond­ing to claims that cit­i­zens may now feel that sacked trade min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley should feel ex­on­er­at­ed be­cause of the lat­est de­vel­op­ments with Hart. Row­ley had said he was fired be­cause of his call for Cab­i­net over­sight for Ude­cott. Man­ning re­spond­ed: "Well if that is the view of the pub­lic, that is the pub­lic's view. But let's see, re­mem­ber what I have said be­fore, one has to await the evening in or­der to de­ter­mine how splen­did the day has been, it's not evening yet."