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‘Dirty water can’t tarnish gold’: St Vincent PM defends family’s HDC purchases
St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves says neither he nor his family did anything wrong in acquiring homes on the market for sale from the Housing Development Corporation (HDC).The Gonsalves family’s purchase/rent of three HDC Victoria Keyes units was first made public by Junior Housing Minister Anil Roberts during a livestream on Tuesday afternoon.
Unlike other HDC properties, Victoria Keyes is being sold by the HDC at market rates.Gonsalves also explained why his wife purchased an HDC property.He said his 97-year-old mother-in-law wanted to have an apartment in Trinidad to be able to go in between T&T (her birthplace) and St Vincent and the Grenadines. “She had friends in Trinidad, and she also wanted to have a place there too, because she has two sons in Trinidad - one is a pilot and one is a retired high court judge. My wife secured the deposit, and I won’t tell you how that deposit was secured, because that’s family business. She pays monthly for that apartment.
“My daughter has a Trinidadian passport and is married to a Trinidadian and has a child who is Trinidadian. She doesn’t own the property. She pays a rent,” he said.On January 19, 2018, former HDC Managing Director Brent Lyons wrote to 65-year-old Eloise Gonsalves to inform her that her application to purchase a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit at Victoria Keyes was successful.Late that year, on August 21, 2018, Lyons wrote to Storm Gonsalves to say that his application to acquire a property at Victoria Keyes was also successful.A third Victoria Keyes unit was assigned to Soleil Gonsalves in a rent-to-own agreement with the HDC in 2020.St Vincent and the Grenadines PM Gonsalves wrote to Republic Bank on October 11, 2024, to guarantee monthly mortgage payments, according to the documents