De­clar­ing that there are “re­al bad man” in Gov­ern­ment this time around, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein has de­fend­ed the re­moval of per­son­nel from State en­ter­pris­es, ac­cus­ing the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion of de­lib­er­ate­ly in­stalling po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­ates in State in­sti­tu­tions to frus­trate an in­com­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing dur­ing Fri­day’s Pri­vate Mem­bers’ Day de­bate on the mo­tion ti­tled “Gov­er­nance of State En­ter­pris­es and State-Con­trolled In­sti­tu­tions”, Ho­sein al­leged that some ap­point­ments were made just days be­fore the April 28, 2025, gen­er­al elec­tion.

He claimed that, in one in­stance, an ad­vis­er to the for­mer agri­cul­ture min­is­ter was in­struct­ed to leave that po­si­tion and be­come deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO).

“So you know what they were do­ing? They were pack­ing all of these State in­sti­tu­tions with their po­lit­i­cal friends, fam­i­lies and fi­nanciers so that if a gov­ern­ment has changed, you un­der­stand, they would be frus­trat­ing the work of the new gov­ern­ment,” Ho­sein said.

He sug­gest­ed that the cur­rent UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion would be more as­sertive in deal­ing with such mat­ters than dur­ing its pre­vi­ous term in of­fice.

“The Prime Min­is­ter said, Mr Speak­er, that the last time she was too nice. It have no fake bad man this time. It have re­al bad man this time, Mr Speak­er. It have re­al bad man. Be­cause we are not play­ing games with the Op­po­si­tion and their trick­ery, Mr Speak­er, and their evil tac­tics.”

Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment was al­so pre­pared to ad­dress wrong­do­ing with­in its own ranks if any was un­cov­ered.

The min­is­ter chal­lenged Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les to sub­stan­ti­ate his claim that the dis­missal of State en­ter­prise ex­ec­u­tives had ex­posed tax­pay­ers to $500 mil­lion in po­ten­tial li­a­bil­i­ties.

“Where did he get $500 mil­lion from? Who cal­cu­lat­ed this? Who were fired? What were the com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages? Where did you get $500 mil­lion from?” Ho­sein asked.

ADB used as ‘slush fund’

Mean­while, Ho­sein called for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to loans is­sued by the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB), al­leg­ing that the in­sti­tu­tion was used as a slush fund for some PNM mem­bers un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Cit­ing a Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (PwC) foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion dat­ed Au­gust 6, 2023, Ho­sein said an ex­am­i­na­tion of 68 loan files un­cov­ered sev­er­al de­par­tures from the bank’s cred­it poli­cies and prop­er lend­ing prac­tices.

Among the find­ings were ap­par­ent­ly fab­ri­cat­ed doc­u­ments in ap­proved loan files, a lack of ev­i­dence that doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by ap­pli­cants had been val­i­dat­ed, and in­ad­e­quate as­sess­ments of cus­tomers’ abil­i­ty to re­pay loans.

He said a foren­sic doc­u­ment ex­am­in­er re­viewed sus­pect­ed forged doc­u­ments in 11 loan files and de­ter­mined that they were like­ly forg­eries.

Ho­sein ques­tioned whether peo­ple with crim­i­nal records and PNM ac­tivists were among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries, sug­gest­ing that funds in­tend­ed for agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment may have been di­vert­ed for oth­er pur­pos­es, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial­ly crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

He al­so high­light­ed one in­stance in which an ap­pli­cant re­ceived close to $200,000 us­ing a per­son­al mo­tor ve­hi­cle as col­lat­er­al, de­spite in­ad­e­quate sup­port­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Ho­sein said the to­tal val­ue of new loans in ar­rears at the time stood at $35.5 mil­lion.

“So what was hap­pen­ing was the ADB was be­ing used as a slush fund, as a slush fund to give away mon­ey for some of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment mem­bers,” Ho­sein al­leged.

He ar­gued that such lend­ing prac­tices came at the ex­pense of le­git­i­mate farm­ers seek­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, in­sist­ing that the find­ings war­rant­ed a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.