Dwyer Astaphan. Photo:sknvibes

Responding to a telephone caller who raised the issue during his weekly radio programme “Ask the Prime Minister”, Dr. Douglas, the former Cabinet minister, who has since been expelled from the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party who also journeyed to Antigua to negotiate the price of the land just outside of the Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport.

“It was Dwyer Astaphan himself who called me from Antigua and wanted me to agree on the telephone as to what the price of the land must be that Standford was offering to pay. It was I as the Prime Minister who told Dwyer Astaphan, ‘you got to be crazy. Come back to St. Kitts and bring that matter before the Cabinet and let the Cabinet sit down and let Stanford come to St. Kitts, sit in the Cabinet room and negotiate with the government the conditions under which he must buy government land’,” Dr. Douglas disclosed.

He added: “That is why today when some people are making all kinds of noises, I laugh. I laugh because they are hypocrites, political hypocrites and political prostitutes as well – sorry to say that – but that is what it is.”

“That fundamental question had escaped me. Who was it that brought Allan Stanford to St. Kitts to buy land at the airport. It was Dwyer Astaphan himself and his law firm who benefitted from the sale of that land,” said Prime Minister Douglas.