Raphael John-Lall

Tem­pers flared as eth­nic­i­ty be­came an emo­tive top­ic at the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU) Com­mis­sion of En­quiry yes­ter­day. Farid Scoon, lawyer for for­mer HCU pres­i­dent Har­ry Harnar­ine, while cross- ex­am­in­ing for­mer HCU con­trac­tor Gor­don James brought up the is­sue of James be­ing an Afro-Trinida­di­an who worked for a cred­it union with a base that was pre­dom­i­nant­ly In­do-Trinida­di­an.

Scoon said: "A case of a black man eat­ing a food. Ac­cord­ing to your wit­ness state­ment, you said you were born in the ghet­to and all the peo­ple you em­ployed were from the ghet­to. And you got heat from the HCU for that." James replied: "They said I was bring­ing Africans and douglar­is­ing the cred­it union."

Scoon then read from James' wit­ness state­ment: "The fo­cus pol­i­cy of the HCU was to make mon­ey on stu­pid n....., re­fer­ring to you Gor­don and the peo­ple you brought in." Deb­o­rah Peake, le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of HCU liq­uida­tor Ram­dath Ram­per­sad, told chair­man of the en­quiry Sir An­tho­ny Cole­man: "Can I ob­ject to this line of cross-ex­am­i­na­tion which I find ir­rel­e­vant and of­fen­sive?

"It is very un­for­tu­nate as my friend Scoon who is sup­posed to be cross- ex­am­in­ing to be lead­ing on race and peo­ple's per­cep­tion of cer­tain races be­cause it is of no busi­ness of this com­mis­sion. Why are we go­ing there?" Scoon de­fend­ed his po­si­tion, how­ev­er, say­ing: "Those is­sues are re­lat­ed to the fall of the cred­it union."

The ex­change came as James gave ev­i­dence yes­ter­day at the Win­sure Build­ing, Port-of-Spain. James de­nied that any di­rec­tor or con­sul­tant of the HCU at­tempt­ed to bribe him with a trip to Chi­na to pre­vent him from tes­ti­fy­ing at the com­mis­sion of en­quiry. He was list­ed to tes­ti­fy on Tues­day but said there was a break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his lawyer Pe­ter Tay­lor which re­sult­ed in him not show­ing up.

James apol­o­gised to Cole­man for his ab­sence. Ju­nior coun­sel to the en­quiry, Ger­ald Ramdeen, asked: "So no one of­fered you a trip to Chi­na to pre­vent you from giv­ing ev­i­dence at this com­mis­sion?" James said he had been in con­tact with for­mer HCU con­sul­tant Jameel Ali about his tes­ti­mo­ny.

"I talk with Mr Ali from time to time and when I saw his name ap­pear­ing in the me­dia, I kept telling him, 'Why don't you go," and I said any time they call me I will go and that is what I have done," he said. Ramdeen fur­ther queried if he had been dis­cussing giv­ing ev­i­dence at the en­quiry with Ali.

"Yes, I talk to him and en­cour­age him to go...He told me he would have come and I am sur­prised he is not here," he said. Ramdeen then asked him: "Did you tell Ali that any­one was prepar­ing a tick­et for you to go to Chi­na for you not to give ev­i­dence at this com­mis­sion? James said: "No. I have not spo­ken to him for the last week."

Peake raised the is­sue of the sub-stan­dard work that was car­ried out on the sev­en projects that James was part of be­tween 2002 and 2005. She asked: "For ap­provals you need to get Town and Coun­try ap­provals, you need to get T&TEC, you need to get the Fire Ser­vice...were you re­spon­si­ble for those ap­provals?" James said every project he worked on was ap­proved by the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty.

She then asked him: "With re­spect to the HCU Con­ven­tion Cen­tre you worked on, the build­ing can­not be rent­ed out now. So when you built this build­ing whether the cost was $6 mil­lion or $10 mil­lion or what­ev­er the cost, did it ever oc­cur to you that you would need to have elec­tric­i­ty?"

He said it was not his re­spon­si­bil­i­ty but that of HCU to en­sure that the right ap­provals were ob­tained. James' com­pa­ny was al­so part of a con­sor­tium which in­clud­ed oth­er con­trac­tors who did work for the HCU. Ac­cord­ing to Peake, the con­sor­tium re­ceived more than $70 mil­lion for the sev­en con­tracts they se­cured over the pe­ri­od 2002 to 2005. She said this in­for­ma­tion is con­tained in the ac­count books of the HCU.

James claimed the fig­ures were in­cor­rect and ar­gued that HCU still has $11 mil­lion owed to the con­sor­tium for work done. He was al­so asked by Scoon about a now in­fa­mous trip to Flori­da, USA, and Dis­ney World. James said it was mere­ly to gath­er in­for­ma­tion and ideas for Jovi's Wa­ter Park, which they were build­ing. He al­so said the HCU of­fi­cials al­so vis­it­ed sim­i­lar parks in Cal­i­for­nia and At­lantic City. "It had no recre­ation for chil­dren when school closed and Jovi's was a place suit­able for recre­ation for them," he said.

"I was de­sign­ing a plan for Jovi's to be a mi­ni Dis­ney Land."