Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves says nei­ther he nor his fam­i­ly did any­thing wrong in ac­quir­ing homes on the mar­ket for sale from the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

The Gon­salves fam­i­ly’s pur­chase/rent of three HDC Vic­to­ria Keyes units was first made pub­lic by Ju­nior Hous­ing Min­is­ter Anil Roberts dur­ing a livestream on Tues­day af­ter­noon.

Un­like oth­er HDC prop­er­ties, Vic­to­ria Keyes is be­ing sold by the HDC at mar­ket rates.

Gon­salves’s wife, Eloise (who is Trinida­di­an), and two chil­dren, Storm and Soleil, ac­quired three HDC prop­er­ties at Vic­to­ria Keyes.

Roberts con­tend­ed that Gon­salves ben­e­fit­ed from po­lit­i­cal favours un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion and lam­bast­ed him for not de­clar­ing ‘his in­ter­ests’.

“Did you de­clare any in­ter­ests? Did you re­ceive any ben­e­fit from the PNM? Any ben­e­fit what­so­ev­er that may have peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go scratch­ing their bald heads like me?

“Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, did you dis­close to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and to the peo­ple of St Vin­cent and Cari­com that when you are speak­ing, your fam­i­ly has re­ceived great ben­e­fit from the PNM?” he asked.

Roberts’ at­tack came af­ter PM Gon­salves re­cent­ly crit­i­cised the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion for its sup­port of the Unit­ed States’ mil­i­tary strikes in the Caribbean that are said to be tar­get­ed at drug traf­fick­ers.

Dur­ing a vir­tu­al speech be­fore a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Fo­rum on Re­gion­al Uni­ty and Free Move­ment in Oc­to­ber, the Vin­cent­ian leader called T&T’s sup­port for the US strikes “mis­guid­ed.”

“Many bad ac­tors could seek to take ad­van­tage of such ac­tions to move to oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion, and this could be­come a cri­sis,” he said.

How­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go and Cari­com have viewed the US’s ac­tions dif­fer­ent­ly.

While Cari­com has called for the re­gion to re­main a zone of peace, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the US ac­tion, say­ing T&T is plagued by drug, gun, and hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Two weeks ago, dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on the Crime Watch pro­gramme, she ac­cused Cari­com of be­tray­ing T&T, say­ing her Gov­ern­ment will now look to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re-align its for­eign pol­i­cy with a fo­cus on coun­tries out­side of the re­gion.

In re­sponse to Roberts’ at­tack, Gon­salves, who is cam­paign­ing for gen­er­al elec­tions in his coun­try on No­vem­ber 27, said, “Dirty wa­ter can’t tar­nish gold.”

“That is a species of to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism that will try to cow­er peo­ple, but I have done noth­ing wrong. My wife has done noth­ing wrong. My chil­dren have done noth­ing wrong. Noth­ing they have done is even im­moral or im­prop­er. But he (Roberts) ob­vi­ous­ly took um­brage, and it is po­lit­i­cal sea­son in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and he wants to help the op­po­si­tion in St Vin­cent.

“Please ex­plain to me how any of these trans­ac­tions could even bear the slight­est sem­blance of be­ing cor­rupt, in­sid­er trad­ing, that there is some col­lu­sion. I have nev­er spo­ken to any mem­ber of gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, or any­body in the state ad­min­is­tra­tion, about these trans­ac­tions. These are Trinida­di­ans, who hap­pen to be in one case - my wife - and in the oth­er two cas­es - my chil­dren, who are per­form­ing trans­ac­tions,” Gon­salves told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day evening.

He point­ed out that his wife and two chil­dren are all cit­i­zens of T&T and are there­fore en­ti­tled to pur­chase prop­er­ties at Vic­to­ria Keyes, which is not low-in­come hous­ing, but sub­ject to open mar­ket bids.

“If there was any­thing that was done cor­rupt, why you don’t charge them? Eh? Why you don’t send the files to the au­thor­i­ties. The sim­ple rea­son is be­cause this is just po­lit­i­cal bile. This too shall pass.

“Don’t you find it some­thing high­ly pe­cu­liar that be­cause a man is a par­ti­san ac­tivist for my friend Kam­la’s gov­ern­ment be­cause I made a point, it was very sim­ple, that I thought that Kam­la was mis­guid­ed to say it (the Caribbean) was not a zone of peace. That’s what Cari­com has said.”

The Vin­cent­ian leader even joked that he should, in some way, be grate­ful for, what he called, Roberts’ mis­placed ac­cu­sa­tions, as it would like­ly gal­vanise the sup­port­ers of his par­ty ahead of the No­vem­ber 27th elec­tions.

“It will have the Labour peo­ple who may have want­ed to stay home be­cause they may have a lit­tle is­sue with this or that, it will gal­va­nize the red ants be­cause they will ask the ques­tion, ‘why it is these peo­ple against Ralph and his fam­i­ly when he didn’t do any­thing wrong or im­prop­er, or im­moral?’”

Gon­salves al­so ex­plained why his wife pur­chased an HDC prop­er­ty.

He said his 97-year-old moth­er-in-law want­ed to have an apart­ment in Trinidad to be able to go in be­tween T&T (her birth­place) and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

“She had friends in Trinidad, and she al­so want­ed to have a place there too, be­cause she has two sons in Trinidad - one is a pi­lot and one is a re­tired high court judge. My wife se­cured the de­posit, and I won’t tell you how that de­posit was se­cured, be­cause that’s fam­i­ly busi­ness. She pays month­ly for that apart­ment.

“My daugh­ter has a Trinida­di­an pass­port and is mar­ried to a Trinida­di­an and has a child who is Trinida­di­an. She doesn’t own the prop­er­ty. She pays a rent,” he said.

Row­ley re­jects Roberts’ claims

Mean­while, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that while he does not usu­al­ly in­ter­act with what he could pick up with his shov­el, he felt com­pelled to re­spond to Roberts.

“Did they (Gon­salves and his fam­i­ly) steal those units or did they buy them at the pub­lished mar­ket prices? I don’t know, but that is per­ti­nent to any query,” said Row­ley, who point­ed out that even though the units were built by the PNM when the UNC came in­to of­fice, they re­pur­posed them to fit high­er-in­come peo­ple in the $2.5 to $3.5 mil­lion range.

“Un­der that sit­u­a­tion, ANY per­son with the means could have bought any unit in a trans­ac­tion with the HDC. I don’t know who was dis­qual­i­fied in a sit­u­a­tion where there were sales to the pub­lic. Most of these units have been sold or rent­ed un­der the PNM CAB­I­NET pol­i­cy of sale to the pub­lic. Most units have been tak­en up by the mar­ket, and many mil­lions earned by the HDC in the sales pro­gramme.

“My last in­for­ma­tion (last year) is that a few units have still not been bought and are still on the mar­ket. It must be very an­noy­ing to all who took part in this very trans­par­ent pro­gramme to have their names in the foul mouth of such an ob­ject that re­al­ly be­longs to be scraped up by a shov­el,” Row­ley said.

Roberts’ ac­cu­sa­tions (leave for on­line)

Guardian Me­dia viewed the doc­u­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the three HDC deals.

The prop­er­ties were ac­quired be­tween Jan­u­ary 2018 and Au­gust 2020, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments.

On Jan­u­ary 19, 2018, for­mer HDC Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Brent Lyons wrote to 65-year-old Eloise Gon­salves to in­form her that her ap­pli­ca­tion to pur­chase a two-bed­room, two-bath­room unit at Vic­to­ria Keyes was suc­cess­ful.

“We are pleased to ad­vise that your ap­pli­ca­tion for the pur­chase of prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Keyes has been ap­proved.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, we here­by make a for­mal of­fer to you to pur­chase the fol­low­ing unit and for the pur­chase price of TT$1,960,000,” the let­ter stat­ed.

An ap­prox­i­mate 10 per cent down­pay­ment of $200,000 was paid to se­cure the unit on Jan­u­ary 23, 2018.

Late that year, on Au­gust 21, 2018, Lyons wrote to Storm Gon­salves to say that his ap­pli­ca­tion to ac­quire a prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Keyes was al­so suc­cess­ful.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, we here­by make a for­mal of­fer to you to pur­chase the fol­low­ing unit and for the pur­chase price of TT$1.625 mil­lion,” the let­ter stat­ed.

A 10 per cent down­pay­ment of $162,500 was put down.

In his de­c­la­ra­tion, Storm Gon­za­les said he was a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I do not own any land or prop­er­ty, and I have nev­er owned any land or prop­er­ty in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Nei­ther have I ever been part-own­er of any land or prop­er­ty, nor owned any land or prop­er­ty joint­ly, in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

A third Vic­to­ria Keyes unit was as­signed to Soleil Gon­salves in a rent-to-own agree­ment with the HDC in 2020.

An agree­ment was signed to let the prop­er­ty to her for five years at a month­ly rental cost of $2,750, not in­clud­ing main­te­nance fees.

Soleil’s broth­er, Storm, wrote the HDC on Au­gust 13, 2020, to say he would be pay­ing for her rent at a Vic­to­ria Keyes prop­er­ty.

“I here­by con­firm that I in­tend to pay my sis­ter Soleil Gon­salves’ rent for the prop­er­ty at Vic­to­ria Keyes for TT$4,350 in­clu­sive of main­te­nance fees for the first five years un­til she grad­u­ates from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies,” he wrote.

The agree­ment was signed by Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, HDC’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor at the time.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines PM Gon­salves wrote to Re­pub­lic Bank on Oc­to­ber 11, 2024, to guar­an­tee month­ly mort­gage pay­ments, ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments.

“I am writ­ing this let­ter to con­firm that I, Ralph E Gon­salves, am the fa­ther of Soleil Gon­salves, and to ex­press my com­mit­ment to pro­vide her with TT$7,000 month­ly to fa­cil­i­tate pay­ment of her mort­gage. I un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of this com­mit­ment and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty I am as­sum­ing,” he wrote.