For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young has dis­missed claims made by for­mer CN­MG CEO Ken Ali that the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion en­gaged in se­cret and pos­si­bly im­prop­er bor­row­ing in the lead-up to the last Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

In a state­ment re­leased yes­ter­day, Young re­spond­ed to a se­ries of Face­book posts by Ali, who claimed that five loans to­talling $1.5 bil­lion were se­cured by the PNM be­tween March 18 and April 15, dur­ing a pe­ri­od when Par­lia­ment was dis­solved and Young was serv­ing as prime min­is­ter.

Ali’s post al­leged that the loans were re­port­ed­ly signed by short-term fi­nance min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul, who had not yet been sworn in as a sen­a­tor. He said they were nei­ther dis­closed to the pub­lic nor ac­count­ed for dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. The loans, which were se­cured from lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al lenders, al­leged­ly in­clud­ed fund­ing for agen­cies such as the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

Young, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed the in­sin­u­a­tions, de­scrib­ing them as part of a broad­er ef­fort by the UNC to “mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion”.

“The posts by Ken Ali and oth­er UNC agents are con­tin­u­ing at­tempts by the UNC to dis­tort facts and con­fuse the pub­lic,” Young said.

He said all bor­row­ings dur­ing the pe­ri­od in ques­tion, ex­cept those linked to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny (TTMF), were brought to Cab­i­net by then fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, not Dhan­paul. He said the Cab­i­net, in­clud­ing him­self, unan­i­mous­ly ap­proved the loans, which he de­scribed as part of the rou­tine func­tions of gov­ern­ment.

“Any gov­ern­ment bor­row­ing brought to Cab­i­net orig­i­nates from the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Min­istry of Fi­nance. The sug­ges­tion that one or two in­di­vid­u­als ap­proved these bor­row­ings, in­clud­ing my­self, is sim­ply false,” Young said.

He in­sist­ed that the loans were nei­ther se­cret nor un­usu­al and had fol­lowed prop­er pro­ce­dure.

“I re­spect­ful­ly sug­gest to the pop­u­la­tion that you should treat the in­for­ma­tion em­a­nat­ing with scant re­gard; it is mis­lead­ing and mis­chie­vous,” Young said.

“Fur­ther­more, I ex­pect more at­tempts to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion to em­anate from the UNC’s camp as we move for­ward and they are un­able to ful­fil their promis­es which I have cau­tioned the coun­try are un­af­ford­able.”

Ali chal­lenges crit­ics:

Ex­am­ine the doc­u­ments

In re­sponse, Ali said his post had gen­er­at­ed dis­cus­sion and de­bate, but al­so scep­ti­cism, de­nial, and “a fair sprin­kling of char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion” from loy­al­ists of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“So, for the cyn­ics, in par­tic­u­lar, here are the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments,” he wrote, shar­ing what he de­scribed as of­fi­cial records to sup­port his al­le­ga­tions.

Ali has chal­lenged crit­ics to ex­am­ine the doc­u­ments for them­selves.