MRS. CALDER HART'S FAMILY LINK TO CH/SUNWAY

Khan, who was married to Sherrine Hart between December 1997 and May 2000, filed two statutory declarations at the inquiry on Monday and Tuesday. In the declarations he deposes the following connections between Calder Hart and CH Development:

• company director Lee Hup Ming (also called Allan Lee Hup Ming) is the brother of Sherrine Hart (Mrs Hart);

• company director Ng Chin Poh (also known as David Ng Chin Poh) was married to Mrs Hart’s sister, Adeline Lee;

• Mrs Hart has been in regular contact with both family members. Khan, a Trinidadian poultry farmer and businessman, married Lee Soh Wah on December 31, 1997 at the Living Word Assembly on Henry Street, Port-of-Spain. Lee Soh Wah was the Malaysian name of Sherrine Hart. The two lived together in Calcutta Settlement, Freeport. Khan, however, filed for divorce and this was granted on May 1, 2000.

In his statements, Khan deposes, “Before my marriage to Mrs Hart, I had known her for seventeen years, having first met and gone to high school with her at the Great Lakes College in Toronto, Canada. I went to school there for seven months from January to August 1980.”

He writes that after he learnt that a commission of inquiry had been set up into Udecott, he later read a Newsday front page article published on May 26, 2008, which raised questions of apparent links between Calder Hart and Sunway. The allegations were raised by then Opposition Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj in Parliament.

“From the above mentioned newspaper article, I recognised Lee Hup Ming and Ng Chin Poh as brother and brother-in-law respectively of Mrs Hart,” he writes. “I know this as a fact from my marriage to Mrs Hart, during which time they resided in Malaysia and we had several conversations with them via internet phone, where we would see and converse with them at the same time. During the time of our marriage, however, they had never been to Trinidad and I had never been to Malaysia.”

Khan noted that apart from chatting with the two Malaysian men, he would receive mail from them and also receive emails from Mrs Hart’s sister Adeline Lee via an email address he links to a Malaysian company called Elite Visage SDN BHD.

“I give this statutory declaration for the purpose of confirming that Mrs Hart is the sister of Allan Lee Hup Ming and at the time of our marriage the sister-in-law of David Ng Chin Poh, who are the same persons that have allegedly been linked...to CH Development which allegedly became Sunway Construction Caribbean Limited,” Khan writes.

CH Development was awarded the $368 million contract for Udecott’s Ministry of Legal Affairs Tower in May 2005.

Khan’s second statement includes supporting documents for his claims, among which is a copy of the Malaysian passport of his ex-wife including a photo of her at the age of 23. Both statutory declarations are signed by Khan and stamped by a commissioner of affidavits.

Last Friday, Khan, who has served as a director of the Poultry Association of Trinidad and Tobago and was appointed to the Livestock and Livestock Products Board in 2005, sent an email to the inquiry under confidential cover.

On Tuesday, he was summoned to the proceedings and took the stand for less than five minutes at the Winsure Building in Port-of-Spain to have his statements tendered into evidence. At the time attorneys were in the process of closing submissions. Inquiry chairman Professor John Uff was tight-lipped over why Khan’s statements were being tendered into evidence. He simply told lawyers the documents would be served on the Udecott legal team as well as on personal lawyers for Calder Hart.

Yesterday, those lawyers held an in-chambers meeting with the commissioners and their legal counsel at the second-floor conference room of the Winsure Building. Earlier, Khan had appeared in the inquiry in response to a summons for possible cross-examination. But attorneys for Udecott and for Hart yesterday opted not to cross-examine him. (See Page 5A)