Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Laven­tille East/Mor­vant Con­stituen­cy Ex­ec­u­tive says it is stand­ing be­hind in­cum­bent Adri­an Leonce, amid al­le­ga­tions and scruti­ny from the Op­po­si­tion over his now-de­funct busi­ness re­la­tion­ship with a man al­leged­ly linked to crim­i­nal net­works in the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope and the Caribbean.

The Ex­ec­u­tive slammed “mis­chief-mak­ers who are at­tempt­ing to dis­cred­it hard-work­ing pub­lic ser­vants.”

“It is un­for­tu­nate but not sur­pris­ing that po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents and those with hid­den agen­das will seek to ma­nip­u­late in­for­ma­tion to cre­ate doubt and con­fu­sion amongst the elec­torate,” the state­ment said.

How­ev­er, the Ex­ec­u­tive said it re­mains con­fi­dent in the work their MP has done over the last 10 years. The state­ment added, “Over the last ten years, we have had the priv­i­lege of work­ing along­side MP Leonce and can con­fi­dent­ly at­test to his in­tegri­ty, ded­i­ca­tion, and com­mit­ment to the peo­ple he serves. He has been a tire­less ad­vo­cate for the voice­less, not on­ly with­in our con­stituen­cy but through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, en­sur­ing that the con­cerns of the un­der­served are heard and ad­dressed.”

It added, “MP Leonce has al­ways stood for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and we com­mend his swift re­sponse in ad­dress­ing these base­less al­le­ga­tions. He has clear­ly out­lined the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the UK-based com­pa­ny, mak­ing it ev­i­dent that there was no wrong­do­ing on his part. His will­ing­ness to take le­gal ac­tion against those spread­ing false in­for­ma­tion fur­ther high­lights his com­mit­ment to up­hold­ing the high­est eth­i­cal stan­dards.”

Mean­while, ad­dress­ing the is­sue on Wednes­day, Leonce ques­tioned the tim­ing of the al­le­ga­tion, say­ing, “It is their way to get some kind of at­ten­tion, but for me, I want­ed to make sure the facts are out there and I’m very com­fort­able with telling the na­tion the facts and I am fo­cused on work.”

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has since come to the de­fence of the Hous­ing Min­is­ter say­ing he met with Leonce and his ex­pla­na­tion was good enough for him.

Young was pressed on Leonce’s al­leged ties to a man he had at­tempt­ed to set up a busi­ness with­in the UK, be­fore ter­mi­nat­ing the busi­ness when he was made aware that the man was fac­ing a po­lice probe.