Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee was grant­ed $1 mil­lion bail yes­ter­day, as the State is set to lay an in­dict­ment against him and busi­ness­man Hugh Leong Poi.

How­ev­er, the two did not ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip dur­ing the hear­ing of their cas­es, af­ter both took ill on Tues­day and re­mained hos­pi­talised yes­ter­day at the Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al hos­pi­tals re­spec­tive­ly. Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip heard the mat­ter in their ab­sence and grant­ed the bail.

Leong Poi, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der SC and Rus­sell Warn­er, was grant­ed $600,000 bail, a re­duc­tion from his ini­tial bail of $800,000 when he was first charged in 2022.

The men are charged in re­la­tion to the al­leged con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the State over the im­por­ta­tion of a $2 mil­lion Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG.

The state is al­leg­ing that Lee, who is rep­re­sent­ed by Mario Mer­ritt and Alex­ia Romero, false­ly claimed own­er­ship to ben­e­fit from par­lia­men­tary tax ex­emp­tions.

On April 7, 2025, act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles dis­missed all charges, rul­ing that pros­e­cu­tors had pre­sent­ed in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence af­ter Lee’s at­tor­neys suc­cess­ful­ly made a no-case sub­mis­sion.

The men will now know of their next court date af­ter the State files its case.

The re­ar­rest of the men on Tues­day does not sig­nal the be­gin­ning of a new case, but the con­tin­u­a­tion of the dis­missed mat­ter, af­ter Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard said he was ap­peal­ing Charles’ de­ci­sion.

The men were re­ar­rest­ed on a bench war­rant, which means the mat­ter will be called be­fore a High Court judge for tri­al.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, the po­lice said the war­rants were filed by the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, pur­suant to Sec­tion 23(5) of the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act, Chap­ter 12:01.

Lee and Leong Poi are charged with con­spir­ing to de­prive the State of tax rev­enue re­lat­ed to the im­por­ta­tion of a Mer­cedes-Benz G63 AMG val­ued at over $2 mil­lion. The of­fences were al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween March 24 and June 8, 2019.

Lee is al­so ac­cused of false­ly claim­ing that the ve­hi­cle was his to claim tax ex­emp­tions. The tax­es in the case in­clud­ed $293,094.02 in Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), $298,650 in mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and $824,548.62 in cus­toms du­ty.

As an MP, Lee is al­lowed pe­ri­od­ic tax ex­emp­tions for mo­tor ve­hi­cles but is re­quired to pay the tax­es if he seeks to sell the ve­hi­cles with­in two years of claim­ing the ex­emp­tions.

The charges were in con­nec­tion with the pur­chase of a $2.3 mil­lion Mer­cedes-Benz and whether the $1.4 mil­lion in tax ex­emp­tions de­rived may have ben­e­fit­ed a par­ty fi­nancier.