By ANDRE BAGOO Wednesday, November 4 2009

THE JOINT Consultative Council (JCC) of the local construction industry has submitted what it claims to be fresh evidence further intensifying links between Udecott executive chairman Calder Hart and a firm his board awarded a $368 million contract to.

“We feel it is incumbent upon the JCC to bring to your attention a business card which has recently come into its possession which, on its face, purports to be a business card of one ‘Allen Lee’, director of CH Development and Construction Pte Ltd (later Sunway Construction Carib-bean),” wrote Desiree Lopez-Arthur, secretary of the JCC in a letter dated November 3 to the Inquiry secretariat.

“You will note from the scanned copy of the card attached (the original of which is in safe keeping and is available to the Commission on request), that it carries the same fax number which TSTT previously confirmed to the commission belonged at all material times to Calder Hart and was located at his home #6 De Lima Terrace in Cascade.”

Lee Hup Ming, also known as Alan Lee, is listed to have been a director of CH Develop-ment/Sunway Construction Caribbean, a firm which was awarded a $368 million contract for the Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower.

Attached to the JCC correspondence is what appears to be a scanned copy of a business card bearing the name ‘Allen Lee’ above the word ‘director’. In the image, the card is headed ‘CH Development & Construction Pte Ltd’. A footer below lists the company’s address as “No 7 The Park Glencoe, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.” A number, 624-8239, Hart’s one-time personal fax number, is also listed as well as the telephone number, 633-9311.

The JCC does not offer an account for the discrepancy between the spelling of Lee Hup’s adopted Christian first name.

In previous correspondence, the JCC wrote to the commissioners asking for certain action to be taken in light of several untested pieces of evidence which link Hart with CH Development/Sunway.

In addition to a fax trail and the appearance of Hart’s personal fax number on CH Development/Sunway correspondence, Carl Khan, the ex-husband of Calder Hart’s wife Sherrine Hart, has deposed in three sworn statutory declarations that Sherrine’s relatives were, in fact, on the board of CH Development/Sunway.

Udecott last month quietly awarded a $300 million contract to Sunway, for the furnishing of the Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower, a decision that has been defended by the Udecott line Minister Emily Gaynor Dick-Forde.

Noting that the commission issued a Salmon letter to Mrs Hart asking her to respond to the allegations, the JCC yesterday wrote,“the emergence of the said business card further reinforces the view of the JCC that Mrs. Sherrine Lee Hart should be summoned before the commission to answer the very serious questions which have arisen.”