TWO Government Ministers, along with former Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UDeCOTT) chairman Calder Hart, are among 145 people in public life who have failed to declare their assets to the Integrity Commission for 2009.

Justice Minister Herbert Volney, who was at the time a High Court judge, and Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education Fazal Karim, who was a United National Congress senator, according to the Commission, failed to file a declaration of income, assets and liabilities and a statement of registerable interests. The ministers were among 145 people named in a two-page advertisement placed by the Integrity Commission in yesterday's Express.

Also named as people who failed to declare their assets for 2009 are Opposition Senators Fitzgerald Hinds and Pennelope Beckles-Robinson and Government Members of Parliament Jairam Seemungal, Neela Khan and Ramona Ramdial.

Hart, the former executive chairman of UDeCOTT who left the country in March last year, hours after tendering his resignation to the then People's National Movement Government, has also failed to declare his assets for the same period.

Hart had served on the UDeCOTT board since its inception in 1994, became its chairman in 2002 and was appointed as executive chairman in 2006.

His resignation came after the publication of a series of documents which allegedly linked his wife, Malaysia-born Sherrine Hart, and a company to which the UDeCOTT board awarded $820 million in contracts.

The documents—birth and marriage certificates tying Sherrine Hart to two men who served as directors at Sunway Construction Caribbean Ltd—emerged after being obtained by the Congress of the People in the course of a six-week investigation.

Hart's resignation also came one day after High Court Judge Mira Dean-Armorer shot down an attempt by lawyers acting on behalf of Udecott to stop the submission of the final report of the Prof John Uff commission of enquiry.

The judge rejected UDeCOTT's arguments that the enquiry, which saw damning evidence of corruption and mismanagement emerge, was illegal.

Investigations into perjury charges against Hart have not been completed by the police more than a year after they first began the probe.