SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali

@guardian.co.tt

Last week, Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and MP for Ca­roni Cen­tral David Lee was re­ar­rest­ed on charges of con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice–charges that were pre­vi­ous­ly dropped six months ago. His al­leged co-con­spir­a­tor is Hugh Leong Poi, a busi­ness­man who owns Sport Out­let Lim­it­ed.

So, what ex­act­ly is Leong Poi’s con­nec­tion to Lee?

Who is Leong Poi?

Leong Poi is a busi­ness­man with long-stand­ing ties to Lee, shar­ing a close friend­ship for years. He came un­der pub­lic scruti­ny af­ter be­ing iden­ti­fied as Lee’s co-con­spir­a­tor in a case in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions 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. While MPs are al­lowed pe­ri­od­ic tax ex­emp­tions for ve­hi­cles, they are re­quired to pay ap­plic­a­ble tax­es if the ve­hi­cles are sold with­in two years.

Lee, a self-made busi­ness­man with over 30 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the cor­po­rate and fi­nan­cial sec­tors, pub­licly de­scribed the charges as a “po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt”.

Long friend­ship with Lee

So what is the re­la­tion­ship be­tween both men?

Eight years ago, fol­low­ing the pass­ing of Leong Poi’s moth­er, Lee post­ed on Leong Poi’s Face­book page that he had re­gard­ed him “as a broth­er”.

In ex­tend­ing his sym­pa­thies, Lee wrote on Leong Poi’s page on March 3, 2017, “I would like to of­fer my sin­cere con­do­lences on be­half of my fam­i­ly to a per­son I con­sid­er as a broth­er, Hugh Leong Poi, on the pass­ing of his moth­er. Our prayers are with him as well as his loved ones dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.” Leong Poi did not re­spond to Lee’s com­ment.

At that time, Lee was the Op­po­si­tion MP for Pointe-a-Pierre.

Leong Poi is al­so the own­er of race­hors­es. A pe­rusal of Leong Poi’s Face­book page showed he had post­ed sev­er­al pho­tos of him­self and Lee proud­ly stand­ing in the win­ner’s en­clo­sure at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma, af­ter his hors­es cap­tured first place in sev­er­al races.

In sev­er­al pho­tos Leong Poi post­ed on Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, Lee gave a thumbs-up, show­ing his sup­port for his vic­to­ries on the rac­ing track.

These posts date back to 2020 and 2021, dur­ing the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, with both men wear­ing face masks.

A video al­so shows Lee and Leong Poi walk­ing to the win­ner’s en­clo­sure with a win­ning horse, smil­ing and in­ter­act­ing ca­su­al­ly.

His page al­so showed glimpses of his per­son­al life—fish­ing, va­ca­tion­ing, cel­e­brat­ing birth­days, and spend­ing time with fam­i­ly. He has trav­elled to sev­er­al coun­tries, in­clud­ing Pana­ma, Hong Kong, and the Unit­ed States.

Pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions

Leong Poi al­so shared a pho­to­graph of him­self with then-prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Cu­ba’s then-pres­i­dent Fi­del Cas­tro, and oth­er dig­ni­taries at an event on De­cem­ber 19, 2011. The pic­ture was cap­tioned, “The Hon PM and Pres­i­dent Cas­tro.” This im­age is just one of many fea­tur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Leong Poi’s so­cial me­dia.

On Jan­u­ary 21, 2011, Leong Poi was ap­point­ed deputy chair­man of the Lake As­phalt Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment led by Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Ahead of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, he post­ed “Yel­low Mel­low” on his page and en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the com­ments, writ­ing: “Make sure we all go out there and cast our vote. Every vote is im­por­tant. Take noth­ing for grant­ed!”

On Wednes­day, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les not­ed that Leong Poi is a known UNC fi­nancier, while PNM’s chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to fire Lee.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made her po­si­tion clear, say­ing, “Min­is­ter Lee con­tin­ues to be the Min­is­ter of Hous­ing.”

FIU case

Last Ju­ly, Leong Poi was one of two firearms deal­ers who won a law­suit chal­leng­ing a re­quest from the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FI­UTT) for the dis­clo­sure of their per­son­al fi­nan­cial records. The oth­er deal­er was Brent Thomas.

High Court Judge Maris­sa Robert­son de­liv­ered the judg­ment, up­hold­ing the ju­di­cial re­view and con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit brought by Thomas, of Spe­cial­ist Shoot­ers Train­ing Cen­tre, and Leong Poi, of Sport Out­let Lim­it­ed, against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Jus­tice Robert­son ruled that act­ing FI­UTT Di­rec­tor Nigel Stod­dard had act­ed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly when he made sep­a­rate re­quests for their fi­nan­cial records in Oc­to­ber 2022 with­out first re­ceiv­ing a sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tion re­port (STR) or a sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty re­port (SAR) from a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. She fur­ther found that cer­tain pro­vi­sions of the FIU Act and re­lat­ed reg­u­la­tions, which ap­peared to per­mit such re­quests in the ab­sence of any ad­verse re­port, vi­o­lat­ed cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

Le­gal pro­ceed­ings

* In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Lee and Leong Poi were ini­tial­ly charged in con­nec­tion with the case but were cleared in April 2025 when act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion, rul­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion’s ev­i­dence did not meet the thresh­old for a High Court tri­al. Af­ter be­ing cleared of the charges, Lee main­tained his in­no­cence.

* Fol­low­ing the clear­ance, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard sig­nalled the of­fice’s in­ten­tion to seek a judge’s war­rant, cit­ing suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to pro­ceed.

* Six months lat­er, on Tues­day, war­rants were filed by the DPP pur­suant to Sec­tion 23(5) of the In­dictable Of­fences (pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry) Act, Chap­ter 12:01. Po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed the war­rants, tak­ing Lee and Leong Poi in­to cus­tody. The news shocked the na­tion.

Lee was grant­ed $1 mil­lion bail, while Leong Poi’s bail was set at $600,000.