SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

With one week be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Ex­press News­pa­per for what he termed as per­pet­u­at­ing lies and pro­pa­gan­da against his fa­ther Richard Young for act­ing as a bro­ker in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar trans­ac­tions.

Young was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a press con­fer­ence held at the min­istry’s head­quar­ters, Port-of-Spain.

He said he was pained and dis­turbed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the ar­ti­cle. He said it was an at­tempt to tar­nish his fam­i­ly’s good name.

Young said from day one in of­fice, he made sure he did not find him­self in any con­flict of in­ter­est “re­al, po­ten­tial or oth­er­wise be­cause I am very aware of the mis­chief that can oc­cur and how peo­ple can try to spin and swing things.”

He said he knew en­ter­ing pub­lic life, po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents would at­tack and un­der­mine him which he had pre­pared him­self for.

When the Op­po­si­tion could not find any wrong­do­ing on him as a pub­lic of­fi­cer, Young said they start­ed at­tack­ing his fam­i­ly—main­ly his young broth­er An­gus Young, CEO of NCB Glob­al Fi­nance (NCBGF) and lat­er his re­tired fa­ther who served T&T for decades.

NCBGF is a Ja­maican owned bank in T&T.

Young said a dis­turb­ing nar­ra­tive sprung up by in 2019 the Op­po­si­tion-main Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark about Young (A) de­fam­ing him.

In de­fence of his broth­er, Young said he “re­ject­ed all the spu­ri­ous at­tacked.”

NCBFG and the Min­istry of Fi­nance al­so is­sued state­ments re­fut­ing their al­le­ga­tions.

The mat­ter even­tu­al­ly died.

“I thought it had come to an end there.”

With days away from the Au­gust 10gen­er­al elec­tion, Young ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of step­ping out of line by us­ing the Ex­press News­pa­per to ped­dle fab­ri­ca­tion and lies about his fam­i­ly.

Young was re­fer­ring to an ar­ti­cle in Sat­ur­day’s Ex­press in which it stat­ed that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Young col­lec­tive­ly re­cused them­selves 94 times from Cab­i­net meet­ings which were pro­vid­ed on Ju­ly 7, 2020, to at­tor­ney Dr Che’ N Din­di­al who made a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOI) re­quest on be­half of ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj for copies of all Cab­i­net Notes and Min­utes for mat­ters in re­spect of which ei­ther Young and Al-Rawi re­cused them­selves.

This was be­cause of fam­i­ly ties and con­flict of in­ter­est in the award of mul­ti-mil­lion con­tracts and the procur­ing of loans, among oth­er fi­nan­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ar­ti­cle stat­ed that doc­u­ments showed that be­tween 2016 to 2020 Young (S) re­cused him­self 30 times from the Cab­i­net when the mat­ter in­volved his fa­ther who act­ed as a bro­ker to the trans­ac­tion or mat­ter was un­der con­sid­er­a­tion.

These were shown in a “ta­bles” for­mat in the ar­ti­cle.

Young de­nied that his fa­ther act­ed as a bro­ker to any trans­ac­tion un­der the PNM led ad­min­is­tra­tion, stat­ing that the ar­ti­cle was “timed” days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion to sway vot­ers and cre­ate mis­chief.

Young said he re­ceived a doc­u­ment show­ing the “ta­bles” for­mat pub­lished by the Ex­press about his fa­ther had been pro­duced by the UNC which has turned out to be a lie.

This, he said was the fi­nal straw that broke the camel’s back.

“It had noth­ing to do with the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion, pro­vid­ed un­der the law. Ac­cus­ing my fa­ther as act­ing as a bro­ker to trans­ac­tions be­fore the Gov­ern­ment...and putting a mon­ey val­ue to it....all we have is our name....all we have is our rep­u­ta­tion,” an emo­tion­al Young said.

Young said the ar­ti­cle was mis­lead­ing, in­ac­cu­rate and full of pro­pa­gan­da vow­ing to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against the Ex­press, the ed­i­tor and Per­sad-Bisses­sar for defama­tion.