Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has ad­vised the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to con­duct an en­quiry in­to for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s move­ments in and out of Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al tenure, fol­low­ing claims of 78 trips to Venezuela, “ghost trips” and four diplo­mat­ic pass­ports al­leged­ly held by Young.

Young, how­ev­er, has dis­missed Je­re­mie’s claims as “des­per­a­tion from the UNC Kak­istoc­ra­cy.”

Je­re­mie made the com­ments dur­ing yes­ter­day’s 2027 Bud­get de­bate, ques­tion­ing the num­ber of trips Young made to Venezuela and whether the records were prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed.

Je­re­mie said he had not­ed Young’s re­sponse to ques­tions about his trav­el, in which the for­mer min­is­ter re­port­ed­ly stat­ed that he had made 13 trips to Cara­cas.

Je­re­mie added that he stood to be cor­rect­ed.

He said Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, who is the cus­to­di­an of Im­mi­gra­tion records, pro­vid­ed him with in­for­ma­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing.

“Not that we mind­ing the man’s (Young) busi­ness. I am just mak­ing sure that what is said in the Par­lia­ment is truth­ful be­cause I know that there are penal­ties for when we go astray.”

Je­re­mie said he couldn’t count the num­ber of trips on the doc­u­ment he was giv­en by Alexan­der. He said he tried to count the num­ber of trips on the first page and mul­ti­plied it by six.

“On the first page alone, I see 26 trips, and when I mul­ti­ply that by six, I think that is some­thing like 156. Lemme qual­i­fy that is, to and fro, 156. So let us say we di­vide that by two, and that may be 78 – that’s a hel­lu­va lot of trav­el for one hu­man be­ing to be do­ing.”

He added, “And when you check the Cab­i­net notes, as the cur­rent Min­is­ter of En­er­gy would have done, we not mind­ing the man’s busi­ness, but the fact is there are no Cab­i­net notes to sup­port many of these trips. They are tak­en out...some of us have diplo­mat­ic pass­ports, I might be wrong again, but I saw four dif­fer­ent diplo­mat­ic pass­ports for one per­son.”

Je­re­mie said he was un­cer­tain what the four pass­ports meant and not­ed that the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter would have to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter.

He al­so de­scribed some of the move­ments record­ed in the doc­u­ments as “ghost trips,” point­ing to in­stances where there were records of ar­rivals but no cor­re­spond­ing de­par­tures.

“What I al­so no­ticed, some of these trips are trips which I de­scribe to be ‘ghost trips’ be­cause, let me ex­plain (I don’t have court clothes), to get out of Trinidad and To­ba­go, if you live here, you have to pass through ei­ther the air­port or sea­port. But some of these trips, there are on­ly records of re­turn­ing home - no de­par­tures. If I’m wrong, I’ll take it up with the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter. I asked him about it, but he can­not give an an­swer.”

He added, “Some trips have records of (Young) go­ing and not re­turn­ing, com­ing back and not go­ing, go­ing to Pana­ma and find­ing his way to Cara­cas.

“I’m not draw­ing con­clu­sions, on­ly giv­ing facts. I think, Min­is­ter (Alexan­der), what you need to do is have some sort of en­quiry in­to the move­ment in and out of (Young) over this pe­ri­od of time. That needs to be done. It could be that your records are de­fi­cient. I’m hop­ing some­thing is wrong with your records, as I re­al­ly don’t wish to know what the al­ter­na­tive might be.”

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Young re­spond­ed to Je­re­mie’s com­ments, say­ing he had trav­elled dur­ing his time in gov­ern­ment to con­duct the coun­try’s busi­ness.

“As the AG an­nounced that he went through my trav­el records from Im­mi­gra­tion for the past ten years, I was a cab­i­net min­is­ter, and end­ed my ten years in gov­ern­ment as prime min­is­ter.

“Dur­ing that ten-year pe­ri­od, I trav­elled to con­duct the busi­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­sults of those trav­els are well doc­u­ment­ed and ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day and will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit us well in­to the fu­ture. The re­struc­tur­ing of At­lantic LNG, 30-year Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cence for Drag­on gas, 20-year Ex­plo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Li­cence for Cocuina-Man­akin, nu­mer­ous gas projects, all of which have pro­vid­ed us with bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue and in­vest­ment and will con­tin­ue to do so for decades to come.”

“Un­like some, I have noth­ing to hide. We will re­mem­ber. Time longer than twine,” Young added.