Gail Alexan­der

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' prospec­tive can­di­date for Barataria/San Juan Sad­dam Ho­sein has called for Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young to re­voke Hous­ing Min­is­ter Adri­an Leonce's ap­point­ment and to have the po­lice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probe Leonce's re­cent ex­pla­na­tion on a com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in 2023.

"This en­tire mat­ter rais­es more ques­tions than an­swers and the Op­po­si­tion re­jects Min­is­ter Leonce's ex­pla­na­tion," said Ho­sein at an Op­po­si­tion me­dia brief­ing in Ch­agua­nas on Wednes­day.

Dis­sect­ing Leonce's state­ment, Ho­sein said the sit­u­a­tion calls in­to ques­tion the new Prime Min­is­ter's judge­ment in ap­point­ing Leonce as Hous­ing Min­is­ter.

Fol­low­ing a re­cent news re­port, Leonce ex­plained that af­ter 10 years of ser­vice as the Laven­tille East/Mor­vant Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, he de­cid­ed to leave ac­tive pol­i­tics and re-es­tab­lish the En­gi­neer­ing and Con­struc­tion busi­ness he start­ed in 2005. It was reg­is­tered in Sep­tem­ber 2023. But in Ju­ly 2024, he was in­formed that "the gen­tle­man with whom I was list­ed joint­ly as a di­rec­tor of my UK com­pa­ny, was the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion un­be­knownst to me."

The com­pa­ny was ter­mi­nat­ed on Ju­ly 17, 2024. Leonce has de­nied in­volve­ment in any il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and rub­bished an Op­po­si­tion mem­ber's so­cial me­dia post on the is­sue.

How­ev­er, Ho­sein, armed with Unit­ed King­dom's Com­pa­nies Reg­istry records, ques­tioned Leonce's state­ments. He said the first dis­crep­an­cy in­volved Leonce's De­cem­ber 3, 2024 ex­pla­na­tion of his fail­ure to show up for screen­ing due to "a fam­i­ly emer­gency," yet three days lat­er he gave a dif­fer­ent state­ment in the Guardian news­pa­per that a mat­ter big­ger than health is­sues forced him out of the race and he hoped it was re­solved.

Ho­sein al­so queried if it was true, as Leonce said, that af­ter 10 years in pol­i­tics, he re­al­ly want­ed to leave - and in Sep­tem­ber 2023 in­cor­po­rat­ed the com­pa­ny - when Leonce filed nom­i­na­tion for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant.

He al­so asked if Leonce's state­ment that he'd planned to es­tab­lish the en­gi­neer­ing/con­struc­tion com­pa­ny he had in 2005, since Ho­sein claimed the UK Com­pa­ny Reg­istry records showed the com­pa­ny was de­scribed as "oth­er trans­porta­tion sup­port ac­tiv­i­ties". He al­leged the di­rec­tors list­ed were Leonce and one Amede Abe­di Wil­son.

Ho­sein ques­tioned Leonce's ex­pla­na­tion of how he was re­ferred to the per­son to set up the com­pa­ny and dis­count­ed Leonce's view that a UK ad­dress was need­ed for di­rec­tors. He said UK laws showed if di­rec­tors didn't live in the UK they must have a UK-reg­is­tered of­fice ad­dress or get per­mis­sion from an­oth­er per­son- like an ac­coun­tant - to use their ad­dress. He queried why Wil­son was al­so made a share­hold­er.

"Min­is­ter Leonce is play­ing smart with fool­ish­ness," Ho­sein added, ask­ing why Leonce hadn't used the ad­dress of his grand­moth­er who he said lives in the UK where he had fa­mil­ial con­nec­tions.

"We can­not buy Leonce's ex­pla­na­tions of 'mere­ly reg­is­ter­ing a com­pa­ny"," Ho­sein de­clared call­ing on Young to re­voke Leonce's ap­point­ment and al­so for the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to probe the is­sue and for the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to de­ter­mine if Leonce filed/de­clared own­er­ship in the com­pa­ny.

Ho­sein said un­der for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's screen­ing Leonce with­drew from con­test­ing but Young pro­mot­ed him to Min­is­ter. He said he was al­so dis­sat­is­fied with the po­lice's re­sponse, "TTPS must be more proac­tive and take more ag­gres­sive steps to get to the bot­tom of this."

Leonce didn't re­spond to Guardian Me­dia's calls on Ho­sein's claims. Young al­so did not re­spond to ques­tions on whether he would re­voke Leonce's ap­point­ment.

Ho­sein slammed Young's judge­ment in ap­point­ing Camille Robin­son- Reg­is as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al not­ing for­mer as­sis­tance com­mis­sion­er of po­lice To­taram Dook­ie's re­cent claims in his state­ment of a po­lice probe of al­leged mat­ters con­cern­ing her 2016 de­posit is­sue. Ho­sein al­so not­ed her li­cence to prac­tice law wasn't re­newed for sev­er­al years and af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed AG she re­cent­ly sought to re­new it.

He al­so said the ball is in Young's court on whether or not to trig­ger Sec­tion 137 of the Con­sti­tu­tion to launch pro­ceed­ings to in­ves­ti­gate and re­move the Chief Jus­tice fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil's rul­ing in Jus­tice Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar's mat­ter against the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.