BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee be­lieves there’s some­thing un­set­tling about his re-ar­rest.

Lee, who al­so serves as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ca­roni Cen­tral, was re-ar­rest­ed on Tues­day, just six months af­ter fraud-re­lat­ed charges against him and busi­ness­man Hugh Leong Poi were dis­missed.

Both Lee and Leong Poi fell ill on the same day they were re-ar­rest­ed. Lee was tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, while Leong Poi re­ceived treat­ment at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. They were grant­ed bail in ab­sen­tia by Mas­ter Lisa Singh-Phillip - Lee in the sum of $1 mil­lion and Leong Poi at $600,000.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Lee said he was “good” and ex­pressed grat­i­tude to those who have sup­port­ed him since Tues­day.

“First­ly, God is great, and I would like to thank my fam­i­ly, staff, Ca­roni Cen­tral, and the many peo­ple who came and prayed for my safe re­turn. I would like to thank my Prime Min­is­ter, who has al­ways sup­port­ed me through this or­deal,” Lee said.

Lee was orig­i­nal­ly charged in 2022 with con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pur­chase of a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle un­der a tax-ex­emp­tion scheme for Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

The State al­leged that Lee as­sist­ed Leong Poi in ac­quir­ing the ve­hi­cle us­ing those ex­emp­tions.

Af­ter a lengthy pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry, Lee was cleared in April 2025 by Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles, who up­held a no-case sub­mis­sion by his de­fence team.

How­ev­er, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard lat­er ap­plied un­der the In­dictable Of­fences (Pre­lim­i­nary En­quiry) Act to re-lay the same charges, lead­ing to Lee’s re-ar­rest this week.

At the time of his ini­tial dis­charge in April, Lee de­scribed the case as a “po­lit­i­cal witch-hunt.”

Yes­ter­day, he said he main­tains that be­lief but did not name any­one he sus­pects may be tar­get­ing him.

“I was cleared by the Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate on 7th April 2025, and now for charges to be re-laid af­ter six-plus months, some­thing does not sit well! I was vin­di­cat­ed be­fore, and I will have my day in court once more,” he added.

Mean­while, when asked whether or not he planned to step down as the case pro­ceeds, Lee did not give a di­rect an­swer.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has reaf­firmed her Gov­ern­ment’s re­spect for ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and ex­pressed con­fi­dence that Lee will re­ceive a fair hear­ing.

De­spite the le­gal de­vel­op­ments, Lee as­sured that op­er­a­tions at the Hous­ing Min­istry will con­tin­ue un­in­ter­rupt­ed.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry, Phillip Alexan­der, yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged the staff’s re­ac­tion but em­pha­sised that work re­mains on track.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, “I mean, every­body was, of course, shocked and tak­en aback, but every­body knows the gen­tle­man that we’re deal­ing with and that this ob­vi­ous­ly is some­thing that was ac­quit­ted be­fore, so we ex­pect it to be ac­quit­ted again.”

He added, “Min­is­ter Lee has set a very high stan­dard. We have a rig­or­ous sched­ule based on the tar­gets that we have to hit. I want to re­mind Trinidad and To­ba­go that we have to do the equiv­a­lent in one year of what the PNM did in 10 years. We have a lot of work, but we’re far ahead of sched­ule be­cause of Min­is­ter Lee.”

The Hous­ing Min­istry was among sev­er­al af­fect­ed by Cab­i­net re­as­sign­ments over the week­end. Alexan­der, one of three min­is­ters over­see­ing the min­istry, said the work­load has been di­vid­ed “seam­less­ly.”