Against ad­vice, I am re­spond­ing to months of what I con­sid­er defama­tion from spe­cif­ic mem­bers of the pub­lic who chose to ped­al lies and spew poi­so­nous and deca­dent rhetoric, with­out bound­aries, even at the cost of the peace and safe­ty of my wife and kids.

I have been made the sub­ject of vit­ri­olic videos and car­i­ca­tures sent via What­sApp to my kids, my wife, my clients and my work col­leagues. I have suf­fered con­tin­u­ous at­tempts to dis­cred­it my per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion and track record. I have had nu­mer­ous lies told about my work, and I have had my good name vul­gar­ly sprawled across plat­forms. But now, I choose to not stay silent.

Who is An­gus Young?

I am a hus­band and fa­ther of young kids. I have a mort­gage, ve­hi­cle loans, and I bud­get like most peo­ple do to pay school fees, in­sur­ance pre­mi­ums, util­i­ties, gro­cery and med­ical bills. I en­tered uni­ver­si­ty at 17 and grad­u­at­ed by 20. I have been work­ing full time for the last 20 years in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try in Trinidad and through­out the wider Caribbean re­gion. My wife of 14 years is my best friend and con­fi­dante. She earned a GPA of 4.0 and was vale­dic­to­ri­an of her grad­u­at­ing year. The day af­ter her vale­dic­to­ri­an speech, she was in­vit­ed to join a po­lit­i­cal par­ty but nei­ther she nor I have any such as­pi­ra­tions. She is an en­tre­pre­neur and a rock star, too. She keeps the fam­i­ly to­geth­er and is the best wife I could ever want and the best moth­er my kids could ever have. Her love and sup­port are the rea­son I am where I am to­day. It is our suc­cess, not just mine.

On the mat­ter of my work, my pro­fes­sion­al track record has earned me many good op­por­tu­ni­ties—and on mer­it. I have earned my pay. I think it is in the pub­lic in­ter­est, to pro­vide prop­er and cor­rect in­for­ma­tion to counter the ig­no­rance that is be­ing ped­alled as fi­nan­cial analy­sis.

In Sep­tem­ber 2014 at the age of 35, I was ap­point­ed CEO of NCB Glob­al Fi­nance (NCBGF). NCBGF was pre­vi­ous­ly AIC Fi­nance Ltd, and pri­or to that, To­tal Fi­nance Ltd. When I joined NCBGF, the UNC formed the Gov­ern­ment and UNC Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Lar­ry Howai cut the rib­bon at the NCBGF launch and in his speech, wished NCBGF well as NCBJ en­tered the T&T mar­ket. NCBGF is here for the long haul, to serve our mar­kets re­gard­less of who forms the Gov­ern­ment and al­ways ful­ly com­pli­ant with the laws and reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern our in­dus­try. NBCGF is reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T and the Trinidad & To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion.

To my ac­cusers, you have sought to take ad­van­tage of the very peo­ple you would like to lead. You know your ac­cu­sa­tions are false and fab­ri­cat­ed as you dis­re­gard the truth in an at­tempt to fool the pub­lic who don't have and are not ex­pect­ed to have an in­ti­mate un­der­stand­ing of in­vest­ment bank­ing. You don't re­spect those you would like to lead as you are tak­ing ad­van­tage of peo­ple who don't know bet­ter, and as such, you abuse the trust they have in you. To you, I say, as Bob Mar­ley did in para­phras­ing Abra­ham Lin­coln, “You can fool some peo­ple some­times but you can't fool all the peo­ple all the time.”

You have sought to de­stroy my rep­u­ta­tion af­ter all the sac­ri­fices my wife and I have made to get where we are to­day. You can't do that. The uni­verse has a way of deal­ing with these things.

When the de­bate is lost, slan­der be­comes the tool of the losers.

An­gus P Young