Young: No corruption concerns under this Government

MINISTER of National Security Stuart Young was unfazed by a US State Dept report’s claims that corruption and bureaucracy were impeding investment into TT.

At Wednesday’s post-Cabinet briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, Newsday asked about the recent 2020 Investment Climate Statement on TT. “That was out of the US State Department but with respect to the trade aspect,” Young said.

“What you find is, if you go back and look at the history of these reports, the few times I see them, it is just a repeating what has been published the years before. Unless somebody consciously in the US State Department goes and intervenes to change the language, it gets repeated the following year.

“But as it stands right now, I’d be very surprised if there was a current concern about any corruption taking place with this administration or even the previous administration.

“Certainly none of that has been brought to our attention.” Young said last week the Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne and he had met US Ambassador Joseph Mondello but there was “absolutely no mention of that.”

“I know in the past, for example when we first came in as an administration in 2015, if there are concerns those concerns are brought to us at our level.” Young recalled former US ambassador John Estrada had raised concerns that US-trained police officers had been dissipated to different units. As a result, they were gathered into a specialist unit, the Special Evidence Recovery Unit, to do the work they were trained to do, he related.