KE­JAN HAYNES

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter and Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce is now in hot wa­ter, af­ter ad­mit­ting to reg­is­ter­ing a UK-based com­pa­ny us­ing an­oth­er per­son’s ad­dress in that coun­try be­fore ter­mi­nat­ing the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, Leonce in­sists he has done noth­ing wrong and re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty linked to the com­pa­ny.

“I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­ny any in­volve­ment what­so­ev­er in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly,” Leonce said in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

Leonce was re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Anil Roberts, who, in a so­cial me­dia video on Sun­day, asked if Leonce was the of­fi­cial re­ferred to in a me­dia re­port that sur­faced on the week­end.

Leonce said he had con­tact­ed his lawyers over the so­cial me­dia post that, in his view, false­ly sug­gest­ed wrong­do­ing.

“The claim is com­plete­ly with­out foun­da­tion,” Leonce said.

The me­dia re­port Roberts was re­fer­ring to claimed that a high-rank­ing Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial was one of two peo­ple linked to a com­pa­ny formed in the UK in Sep­tem­ber 2023. The oth­er di­rec­tor of the com­pa­ny was lat­er al­leged­ly dis­cov­ered to have in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal ties across the Unit­ed States, the Caribbean, and Eu­rope.

In his re­sponse yes­ter­day, Leonce con­firmed that he used a Trinida­di­an busi­ness­man’s UK ad­dress to set up an en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion com­pa­ny in Britain in Sep­tem­ber 2023.

“Reg­is­ter­ing the busi­ness, I was told I re­quired a UK ad­dress, and the gen­tle­man of­fered to use his, which meant that he would al­so nec­es­sar­i­ly have had to be list­ed as a di­rec­tor,” Leonce said.

“I did not see a prob­lem, giv­en the fact that we were mere­ly reg­is­ter­ing a com­pa­ny and this is a nor­mal type of trans­ac­tion. There was no bank ac­count or any oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty or con­sid­er­a­tions.”

How­ev­er, Leonce said a fur­ther in­for­ma­tion search was ini­ti­at­ed dur­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process.

“While com­plet­ing the reg­is­tra­tion, the gen­tle­man was in­formed by his agents that, giv­en that I was a po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed per­son (PEP), he need­ed to pro­vide more in­for­ma­tion than was usu­al and that the process would be a lit­tle longer. The com­pa­ny was reg­is­tered in Sep­tem­ber 2023,” he said.

A few months lat­er, though, Leonce said he got new in­for­ma­tion on the in­di­vid­ual.

“In Ju­ly 2024, I was in­formed that the gen­tle­man with whom I was list­ed joint­ly as a di­rec­tor of my UK com­pa­ny, was the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­be­knownst to me. I im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed him and told him to ter­mi­nate the com­pa­ny and that I will be sev­er­ing all con­nec­tions with him,” he said.

“The com­pa­ny was ter­mi­nat­ed on Ju­ly 17, 2024. I have no af­fil­i­a­tion with the in­di­vid­ual oth­er than this and know noth­ing of his busi­ness deal­ings or oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Giv­ing an in­sight in­to why he start­ed the busi­ness, Leonce said hav­ing stud­ied in the UK, he de­cid­ed to start it as part of his plan to re-en­ter the en­gi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion in­dus­try af­ter a decade in pol­i­tics. He said he aimed to gen­er­ate for­eign cur­ren­cy through op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean and the UK.

Last De­cem­ber, Leonce sud­den­ly stepped away from elec­toral pol­i­tics, choos­ing, on the day he was sched­uled to be screened again by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for his seat, not to at­tend. He has nev­er said why he was step­ping aside but con­firmed it was not due to health is­sues or fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young did not an­swer queries from Guardian Me­dia on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribed the rev­e­la­tions as “deeply trou­bling,” say­ing it ap­peared that Leonce had failed to con­duct prop­er due dili­gence in the mat­ter.

“It speaks vol­umes of a lack of judge­ment if one can sub­ject one­self to busi­ness arrange­ments with an al­leged­ly no­to­ri­ous per­son with­out due care and at­ten­tion,” Mooni­lal said.

“Why would a sit­ting Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment be reg­is­ter­ing a busi­ness in 2023 in Eng­land?”

He al­so raised ques­tions about whether Leonce had prop­er­ly de­clared the ven­ture to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, adding that the Op­po­si­tion would be de­mand­ing an­swers.

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing, giv­en that new Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has re­posed ex­treme con­fi­dence in the min­is­ter to han­dle such a crit­i­cal multi­bil­lion-dol­lar sec­tor as hous­ing,” he said.

Al­so con­tact­ed last evening, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Hay­den Git­tens said he was not aware of Leonce’s state­ment, or if Leonce had in fact de­clared that he had an in­ter­est in a UK com­pa­ny. He said he pre­ferred not to com­ment di­rect­ly on those mat­ters. 

How­ev­er, Git­tens ex­plained that there is noth­ing pre­vent­ing a gov­ern­ment mem­ber from open­ing a busi­ness or be­com­ing a di­rec­tor of a busi­ness, but said there is a dis­clo­sure re­quire­ment as part of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. 

“The form B re­quires a dis­clo­sure if you have that in­ter­est, which may or may not cre­ate a con­flict sit­u­a­tion. It would not be a breach sim­ply open­ing the busi­ness or ac­count. If you do not de­clare, then a per­son would be in con­tra­ven­tion of the act.”