Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has come to the de­fence of Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce, who has come un­der scruti­ny from the Op­po­si­tion over his now-de­funct busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with a man al­leged­ly linked to crim­i­nal net­works in the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope and the Caribbean.

Young ad­dressed the is­sue yes­ter­day while at­tend­ing the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) pre­lim­i­nary ex­am­i­na­tion of nom­i­na­tion pa­pers at the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School in Port-of-Spain.

Af­ter par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ex­er­cise, Young was pressed on Leonce’s al­leged ties to a man he had at­tempt­ed to set up a busi­ness with in the UK, be­fore ter­mi­nat­ing the busi­ness when he was made aware that the man was fac­ing a po­lice probe.

Young said he was sat­is­fied with the min­is­ter’s ex­pla­na­tion of the mat­ter.

“I met with Adri­an, Min­is­ter Leonce (be­fore his pub­lic state­ment), and he gave me that ex­pla­na­tion. He has now put it out there for con­sump­tion by the pop­u­la­tion. And at this stage, that’s good enough for me,” Young said.

The Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed that he would not con­duct fur­ther fact-check­ing on the mat­ter and not­ed that he had been in­formed the com­pa­ny nev­er be­came ful­ly op­er­a­tional.

“We’ve seen the rea­son why it end­ed up with that in­di­vid­ual and im­me­di­ate­ly up­on be­ing warned, the ac­tion he took, which was to come off of the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny, I have been told, nev­er did any trad­ing, there’s no bank ac­count et cetera,” Young said.

Over the week­end, Op­po­si­tion mem­ber Anil Roberts spec­u­lat­ed on whether Leonce was the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial ref­er­enced in a me­dia re­port about a busi­ness part­ner­ship with an al­leged Trinida­di­an gang­ster re­sid­ing in the UK.

Roberts al­so ques­tioned whether this con­nec­tion in­flu­enced the UK’s re­cent visa re­stric­tions on T&T, an­nounced on March 12, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) re­quire­ment from March 13.

In re­sponse, Leonce is­sued a state­ment on Mon­day clar­i­fy­ing that his UK-reg­is­tered busi­ness was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2023 and ter­mi­nat­ed in Ju­ly 2024, af­ter he dis­cov­ered his co-di­rec­tor was un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“I have no af­fil­i­a­tion with the in­di­vid­ual oth­er than this and know noth­ing of his busi­ness deal­ings or oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties,” Leonce stat­ed.

Leonce al­so in­di­cat­ed he was con­sid­er­ing le­gal ac­tion over the in­for­ma­tion put in the pub­lic do­main on the mat­ter, re­ject­ing any ac­cu­sa­tions of wrong­do­ing.

“I cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­ny any in­volve­ment what­so­ev­er in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, ei­ther di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly. The claim is com­plete­ly with­out foun­da­tion,” he said.

Mean­while, asked to com­ment on the is­sue again last evening, af­ter vis­it­ing the Debe Is­lam­ic As­so­ci­a­tion Masjid, where he broke fast with the Ja­maat, Young said, “Min­is­ter Leonce has put out a state­ment in black and white to the pop­u­la­tion ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion. There is go­ing to be a lot of al­le­ga­tions and pro­pa­gan­da dur­ing the elec­tion pe­ri­od. What we saw was an al­le­ga­tion next to some­one else’s name. He (Leonce) has ad­dressed that al­le­ga­tion, which is the same ex­pla­na­tion he gave to me as Prime Min­is­ter, and I think that suf­fices for now. We will con­tin­ue for­ward. I have con­fi­dence that the sto­ry he told is the truth.”

He not­ed, “I have seen the MP for Oropouche East rais­ing is­sues and mak­ing al­le­ga­tions about Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley and my­self, and I had to smile be­cause I re­call, dur­ing my time as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, that same in­di­vid­ual was im­pli­cat­ed by law en­force­ment in­tel­li­gence. He nev­er de­nied pay­ing an in­voice at the Hy­att for peo­ple in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty. He left Par­lia­ment and went to Hy­att to set­tle their bill. You will re­call Gary Grif­fith speak­ing about an MP who was ac­tu­al­ly call­ing al­leged gang lead­ers from Port-of-Spain and Diego Mar­tin to come to a place not far from right here to meet with them.”

He added, “It is a bit hyp­o­crit­i­cal, but the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will look at these things and see them as elec­tion sea­son tac­tics. Let us lis­ten to who de­liv­ers what­ev­er mes­sage and un­der­stand their past and what they are try­ing to achieve—es­pe­cial­ly to hear that from Dr Mooni­lal re­gard­ing crim­i­nals and crim­i­nal­i­ty. We, as cit­i­zens, are much smarter than that.”

With re­port­ing by

Rad­hi­ca de Sil­va