Lee to appeal High Court ruling; no plans to resign

Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee says he will ap­peal a re­cent High Court rul­ing in on­go­ing le­gal pro­ceed­ings against him, in­sist­ing that he has not been found guilty of any of­fence and has no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing.

His po­si­tion comes amid calls from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for him to step down or for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­move him from Cab­i­net.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, Lee said the rul­ing con­cerned a le­gal pro­ce­dure and should not be in­ter­pret­ed as a find­ing of guilt.

He re­called that in April 2025, Act­ing Chief Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles dis­charged him fol­low­ing a four-day pre­lim­i­nary en­quiry in­volv­ing 19 wit­ness­es and 29 wit­ness state­ments.

Lee said the mag­is­trate found that the pros­e­cu­tion’s ev­i­dence was too weak to sup­port a con­vic­tion, even if ac­cept­ed at its high­est.

How­ev­er, he said the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions sub­se­quent­ly ap­plied to the High Court with­out no­ti­fy­ing him or giv­ing him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard. A war­rant was lat­er is­sued for his ar­rest.

Lee al­so ques­tioned the le­gal pro­ce­dure used, ar­gu­ing that it re­lied on leg­is­la­tion that had been re­pealed.

He said his at­tor­neys had ad­vised him that there were sub­stan­tial grounds to ap­peal the High Court’s de­ci­sion, with good prospects of suc­cess.

“A pro­ce­dur­al rul­ing should nev­er be pre­sent­ed as a find­ing of crim­i­nal guilt,” he said.

Lee main­tained that the le­gal pro­ceed­ings would not dis­tract him from his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as Hous­ing Min­is­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s hous­ing needs and ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for home­own­er­ship.