MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West Stu­art Young is call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to im­me­di­ate­ly re­move Min­is­ter of Hous­ing David Lee from her Cab­i­net.

He warned that al­low­ing a min­is­ter fac­ing crim­i­nal charges to re­main in of­fice sets a “dan­ger­ous” prece­dent and un­der­mines pub­lic trust.

In a Face­book post, Young stat­ed, “It is un­ac­cept­able for a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go to be the sub­ject of crim­i­nal charges, out on bail, and con­tin­ue sit­ting in Cab­i­net.

The prece­dent, he said, “must not be ac­cept­ed by Trinidad and To­ba­go”. He said it was “a dan­ger­ous de­vel­op­ment and can­not sim­ply be brushed aside”.

While af­firm­ing his be­lief in due process and the prin­ci­ple of “in­no­cent un­til proven guilty”, Young ar­gued that any pub­lic of­fi­cial charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence should step down un­til their name is cleared.

Young ques­tioned the mes­sage be­ing sent to cit­i­zens.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rep­u­ta­tion is be­ing erod­ed, and the Prime Min­is­ter is re­spon­si­ble. What ex­am­ple is be­ing set for cit­i­zens? So if an of­fi­cer in charge of cash in the pub­lic ser­vice or a pri­vate work­place is caught steal­ing and charged, Mrs Per­sad-Biss­esar is say­ing it is OK for that per­son to re­main in charge of the cash whilst his case in the crim­i­nal courts is on­go­ing. Re­al­ly?”

He urged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to act de­ci­sive­ly and re­move Lee from the Cab­i­net.

Last week, Per­sad-Bisses­sar made it clear Lee will con­tin­ue to be the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing.

Lee is ac­cused of im­prop­er­ly claim­ing tax ex­emp­tions on a Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG val­ued over $2 mil­lion im­port­ed in 2019. The of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween March 24 and June 8 of that year.

Ac­cord­ing to the charges, Lee, who was then an MP, false­ly claimed own­er­ship of the ve­hi­cle to se­cure tax ex­emp­tions, which in­clud­ed $293,094.02 in Val­ue Added Tax, $298,650 in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax, and $824,548.62 in cus­toms du­ty.

Min­is­ter Lee, who al­so serves as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, is cur­rent­ly on $1 mil­lion bail and has pro­fessed his in­no­cence.