Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

For­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, peeped out at mem­bers of the me­dia through the slid­ing glass doors of his front porch at his Cas­cade home around 1 pm yes­ter­day. Hart re­mained in­doors af­ter re­turn­ing to Trinidad from Flori­da over the week­end. He came back to his No 6 de Li­ma Road man­sion on Sec­ond Av­enue on Sat­ur­day night, af­ter leav­ing more than a month ago, on March 6. Around 1 pm yes­ter­day, Hart was spot­ted wear­ing a blue robe, walk­ing in­side of his home. Min­utes lat­er, he peeped out from the cor­ner of the right side of the slid­ing glass doors in his front porch, and looked out at mem­bers of the me­dia gath­ered out­side the front en­trance.

There were more ac­tiv­i­ties than nor­mal oc­cur­ring at Hart's res­i­dence since he, his wife Sher­rine and their daugh­ter Jean left the coun­try about 35 days ago. The wa­ter pump kept go­ing on and off, and one of the air con­di­tion units made loud nois­es, giv­ing the im­pres­sion that both ap­pli­ances were in use. Hart's Five-Se­ries BMW was parked in the garage, but his oth­er BMW car was not on the com­pound. No one an­swered ei­ther the door­bell or the in­ter­com that was out­side the res­i­dence. Ear­li­er in the day, around 10.45 am yes­ter­day, one of Hart's sons, Ross, emerged from the house and jumped in­to his grey Toy­ota Corol­la and drove away.

He de­clined to speak with mem­bers of the me­dia. One of Hart's neigh­bours said he was un­aware that Hart had re­turned to Trinidad, un­til he read about it in the Sun­day Guardian. He added that there was no in­di­ca­tion that Sher­rine and Jean had re­turned. Sev­er­al of Hart's neigh­bours de­clined com­ment about his re­turn. Hart has been em­broiled in al­le­ga­tions un­der his tenure as ex­ec­u­tive Ude­cott chair­man. It is be­ing al­leged that the Cana­di­an-born Hart fun­nelled hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the pock­ets of rel­a­tives of his wife's Malaysian fam­i­ly, through the award of Ude­cott con­tracts, among oth­er things.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple ob­tained doc­u­ments from the Malaysian Reg­istry that showed Hart's wife, whose birth name was Lee Soh Wah, was the sis­ter-in-law of Ng Chin Poh, one of the di­rec­tors of CH De­vel­op­ment and Con­struc­tion Ltd.

The com­pa­ny was award­ed about $1 bil­lion in Ude­cott con­tracts to con­struct the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Tow­er in Port-of-Spain. Hart's de­par­ture from Trinidad came less than 24 hours af­ter High Court Jus­tice Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er re­ject­ed re­quests from his lawyers to stop sub­mis­sion of the re­port of the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to Ude­cott and the Lo­cal Con­struc­tion Sec­tor. Hart de­cid­ed, sub­se­quent­ly, to re­sign from Ude­cott and four oth­er state boards: the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny, The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment, Ltd and Home Mort­gage Bank. His sud­den res­ig­na­tion fol­lowed a con­ver­sa­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.