State-owned UDeCOTT has backed down from filing a lawsuit to have the hearings of the Commission of Enquiry stopped.

The company in a pre-action protocol letter, had called on every member of the Commission to ’recuse himself and stand down forthwith’ and stated once this was not done, it would apply to the High Court for an order that further hearings be suspended.

This followed UDeCOTT’s charge in the letter that the Commissioners were biased and that it had lost confidence in their ability to perform their mandate into enquire into UDeCOTT and the construction sector.

The lawsuit could have seriously derailed the Commission of Enquiry into UDeCOTT and the construction sector, which has been sitting since the start of this year.

There was strong speculation yesterday that the intervention of a third party caused the UDeCOTT board to reverse its decision. It was known in high legal circles that Attorney General John Jeremie did not support the State-owned company’s plan to file a lawsuit against a Cabinet-appointed Commission of Enquiry.

In effect it would have amounted to a State company challenging a decision of the Cabinet. The UDeCOTT board met on Tuesday and formally agreed to withdraw the pre-action protocol letter.

However the withdrawal is not unconditional. In its letter to the Secretary of the Commission of Enquiry, Judith Gonzalez, lawyers for UDeCOTT, Pollonais, Blanc, de la Bastide and Jacelon, stressed that one of the conditions is that the Commission should not assume that the withdrawal means that UDeCOTT has waived its right to pursue these matters (of bias) raised in the pre-action letter in the future. ’If any of the matters contained in UDeCOTT’s (pre-action protocol) letter...were to be pursued at any time in the future (by way of Judicial Review or otherwise), the Commission will take no point against UDeCOTT that it has waived its entitlement to pursue those grounds of complaint,’ the letter stated

In the letter UDeCOTT also stipulated that the rescinding of the preaction protocol letter was also being done on the condition that UDeCOTT withdraw its letters-of July 28 and July 31-which related to this issue.

Among the examples of bias cited by UDeCOTT in its pre-action letter were statements made by Commissioner Israel Khan in a TV6 interview in which he allegedly made disparaging remarks about individuals of white European ancestry ’singling out’ white Canadians. UDeCOTT boss Calder Hart is Canadian.

The letter also cited a statement by Chairman John Uff that he had the impression that UDeCOTT were a law unto themselves. It also pointed to a relationship between Commissioner Kenneth Sirju and NHIC and also stated that he was involved with a firm, KS&P Limited, which submitted a proposal on the Brian Lara Stadium whose master plan for the Sports Training Facilities at Tarouba were rejected in favour of Turner Alpha Limited. The letter also cited the treatment given by the Commission to the evidence of Carl Khan, Calder Hart’s wife’s first husband who in a submission confirmed that there was a relationship between the Harts and CH Development, a firm that won a contract to build the Legal Affairs tower.