UDECOTT GIVES SUNWAY NEW $300M PROJECTBy Andre Bagoo Sunday, October 11 2009
WHILE furore continued to mount this month over its decision to challenge the proceedings of the Uff Commission of Inquiry, the Udecott board was reported to have quietly decided to award a multimillion-dollar contract to Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited, the company that has been linked to Udecott executive chairman Calder Hart.
Sources close to Udecott reported that the board this month chose Sunway for a project worth approximately $300 million. The contract was awarded for the furnishing and fittings of the Ministry of Legal Affairs tower.
The reports of Udecott’s selection of Sunway will raise concerns given untested evidence that has emerged in the Uff Inquiry which points to family links between Sunway and Hart.
In a series of sworn statutory declarations filed in May and September, Carl Khan, the ex-husband of Sherrine Hart, Calder Hart’s wife, deposed that two former directors of Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited were, in fact, Mrs Hart’s brother and brother-in-law. Khan said Alan Lee Hup Ming and David Ng Chin Poh had been in contact with Mrs Hart for years.
Previously, in April 2005, Sunway (once called CH Development and Construction Ltd) was awarded a $368 million contract for the Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower at the Government Campus Plaza in downtown Port-of-Spain. That award was made even though Sunway placed third in the tendering for that project, behind Johnson International and Hafeez Karamath Limited.
The award of the Ministry of Legal Affairs contract was the culmination of a process which has raised questions over the paper trail leading up to it in documents lodged by Udecott in the inquiry.
According to a copy of a letter dated October 25, 2004, CH Development director Leong Choong Chee wrote Calder Hart directly, claiming to have been invited to “submit the credentials of CH Development & Construction Pte Ltd for the prequalification as contractor for Udecott projects.”
However, according to Companies Registry documents, a company by the name of CH Development and Construction Limited was incorporated only ten days earlier, on October 15, 2004.
In his October 2004 letter, Leong Choong Chee said, “CH Development & Construction Pte Ltd (CHDC) is a Trinidadian company just incorporated recently for the sole purpose of undertaking projects for your esteemed company. CHDC is a subsidiary of Sunway Construction Berhad (SUNCON).” However, according to a Reuters report of January 30, 2005, “Sunway Construction BHD...on January 27, 2005, acquired three shares, representing 100 percent of the issued and paid up share capital of CH Development and Construction Limited at a total consideration of TT$10,000.”
Before this acquisition, Turner Construction International’s Gordon C Bradshaw penned a letter making recommendations about Sunway and whether or not they should be considered for the Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower project as potential bidders. “We refer to the documentation sent to us last Thursday in respect of Sunway.
“This is a small to medium sized Malaysian company with significant recent experience in commercial...facilities,” Bradshaw said of the “Sunway Group from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia” in a letter dated November 2004. But this Turner document, lodged by Udecott lawyers, bears a received stamp dated June 6, 2008, at odds with the letter’s date of November 2004. In a statutory declaration filed with the inquiry secretariat last month, Winston Agard, the then Udecott chief executive officer, was unable to explain the stamp. But he attested to the existence of the letter, which had been purportedly addressed to him. By letter dated April 28, 2005, Udecott awarded the contract to “Sunway Construction Berhad” and CH Development & Construction Limited, even while both were legally distinct entities and legal opinions indicated that one company could not be allowed to vouch for the other.
It was this letter, as well as another letter dated January 22, 2005 and purportedly sent by “CH Development & Construction Ltd” to Udecott that caused a firestorm during the hearings of the inquiry. Both letters contain mast heads and fax trails that listed the CH Development fax number as 624-8239, the one-time personal fax number of Udecott chairman Calder Hart.
In September, Carl Khan lodged further evidence linking the Harts to Sunway. He filed a love letter sent to him, purportedly from Sherrine Hart, which listed a return address in Malaysia that was identical to the address listed for Alan Lee Hup Ming on a DHL airway bill.
A calling card, purportedly that of Mrs Sherrine Hart, has also emerged. The card reads: “Sherrine Lee Hart, Business Consultant”. It lists a fax number as 624-8239, the same fax number as her husband’s fax which was listed as that for CH Development. As such all eyes will be on Khan, who is expected to take the stand on Tuesday. On October 3, 2007, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago entered into a purported “Memorandum of Understanding” with Sunway Holdings Berhad “to record their mutual understanding and commitment to enter into commercial discussions with each other in respect of certain agreed areas of collaboration pending the negotiation and execution of the relevant binding agreements.” Despite the issue of family links between Hart and Sunway being raised in May 2008 by Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, Prime Minister Patrick Manning held meetings with Sunway officials at the Office of the Prime Minister in July that year.
