Former minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday called on Prime Minister Patrick Manning to immediately cease and desist from giving personal support to Calder Hart and UDeCOTT and using the machinery and resources of the State to ’defend, encourage and sustain’ them.

Rowley is demanding that Manning instead immediately removes Hart from all agencies in which he ’interacts with the public purse’.

The Diego Martin MP is also demanding that a ’forensic and criminal investigation be pursued with dispatch’ into the Ministry of Legal Affairs Towers and the Brian Lara Cricket Academy.

Rowley’s demands came in the wake of so far uncontested revelations of a family link between UDeCOTT executive chairman Hart and the directors of CH Development Limited, a company which had been in business a mere three weeks when it was awarded the $368 million contract for the Ministry of Legal Affairs Towers. Khan’s testimony is to be examined in the next round of hearings of the commission of enquiry into UDeCOTT and the construction sector.

Businessman Carl Khan, the former husband of Hart’s present wife, Sherrine, in a sworn statement confirmed a revelation, previously made in Parliament by Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, that the directors of CH Development were Hart’s brothers-in-law- Allan Lee Hup Ming and David Ng Chin Poh. Stating that there appeared to be ’serious misconduct surrounding the award’, Rowley said the evidence presented to the Commission of Enquiry showed that CH Development was invited by Calder Hart to tender.

’Interestingly enough the huge legal team of UDeCOTT and Calder Hart very pointedly chose not to cross-examine Mr Khan. In the principle of the criminal law that means that Mr Khan’s evidence has remained unchallenged and therefore is to be accepted as given,’ Rowley asserted.

’In the face of that and the previous written denials (from Hart) ... that he knew nothing about CH Development, a company’s whose name just happens to match his initials, it stands to follow that this chairman of a major state enterprise to which the Cabinet directs millions of dollars of the development programme of the country, stands accused with unchallenged evidence,’ Rowley noted.

Rowley noted that evidence showed that acceptance by CH Development of the contract came from a telephone instrument located in the home of Calder Hart. He said CH Development, was a brand new company, when it was invited to bid and therefore could not have possibly pre-qualified based on the normal pre-qualification criteria.

’I said (after my dismissal) if it had been found that I had no basis to be concerned about UDeCOTT, I was prepared to resign my seat and to walk away from public life. Today... my worse fears have been confirmed about UDeCOTT and those who have been mishandling public monies at UDeCOTT and those who have been providing protection for Calder Hart and UDeCOTT,’ Rowley said.

’You may also recall that this connection between CH Development and Sunway was raised by me last year during the Budget debate and that triggered the release of this $10 million slander against me. I queried the facility that Sunway had to the Prime Minister’s office and the memorandum of understanding which Sunway procured...and this whole Cleaver Heights affairs to put it in the words of a member of the Commission of Enquiry (Israel Khan) was a tit for tat response to my presentation in the Parliament. The chickens are coming home to roost,’ Rowley stated.

Rowley said it was just brought to his attention that the Commission has been requested by the Cabinet to expand its terms of reference with respect to the Cleaver Heights Housing Development Project. ’It would appear that elements of the Cabinet would stop at nothing in the wasteful expenditure of public monies until such time as they receive a report or have a person who is willing to provide a report which can support their malicious and preposterous position as advanced in detail and dismissed at the Commission of Enquiry,’ he said.

’In the absence of an apology from the Prime Minister, who started this whole Cleaver Heights thing, I consider this latest development to be yet another shameless and shameful act on the part of persons whose interest should be the public well-being, but instead are prepared to spend public money and public time in a vendetta against me, tarnishing the (previous) Board of the HDC (Housing Development Corporation) and officers of the HDC and all those who took part in that project,’ Rowley stated.