Trinidad: Marlene still in custody after bail, co-accused released

(Trinidad Guardian) Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald re­mained un­der po­lice cus­tody at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre, even though her $2 mil­lion bail bond had been grant­ed.

“As far as I have been told the (bail) process at the court has been com­plet­ed. It is just for the of­fi­cers to vis­it her at the hos­pi­tal and com­plete the process,” Mc­Don­ald’s at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view around 4 pm on Wednes­day.

 
But up to 6 pm, Mc­Don­ald was still ward­ed at the med­ical in­sti­tu­tion wait­ing to sign off the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments.

“We are get­ting there. It is crawl­ing,” El­der said.

On Tues­day, El­der com­plained about the slow process of se­cur­ing bail for Mc­Don­ald which she de­scribed as “te­dious, slow and an­ti­quat­ed.”

El­der said Mc­Don­ald’s bail was grant­ed by Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle, El­der said.

How­ev­er, she could not say if one bailor or sev­er­al bailors stood her client’s bail.

“I don’t know. I don’t have those de­tails.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the hic­cup in get­ting fi­nal ap­proval now lies in the hands of the prison au­thor­i­ties.

Mc­Don­ald’s bail doc­u­ments were trans­mit­ted to the Gold­en Grove Prison yes­ter­day for au­thor­i­ties there to stamp the doc­u­ments be­fore re­turn­ing them to the hos­pi­tal for the for­mer min­is­ter to be re­leased from cus­tody.

On Mon­day, Mc­Don­ald com­plained of feel­ing un­well hours af­ter be­ing charged with sev­en cor­rup­tion-re­lat­ed of­fences and had to be rushed to the hos­pi­tal for med­ical at­ten­tion.

Mc­Don­ald was fired for a third time as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter af­ter she was charged and sacked of her po­si­tion as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM on Tues­day by Prime Min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

El­der de­nounced re­ports that once Mc­Don­ald was dis­charged by her doc­tors she may have to be tak­en to court so the charges could be read to her.

Mc­Don­ald faced three charges of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice, three charges of con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the state of T&T and one charge of mon­ey laun­der­ing, as El­der stood for her in ab­sen­tia.

El­der said Mc­Don­ald was re­mand­ed to reap­pear be­fore the court on Sep­tem­ber 9.

Mean­while, it was an­oth­er long day of frus­trat­ing wait­ing for Mc­Don­ald’s co-ac­cused, as on­ly one of the three men charged along­side her was able to ac­cess bail on Wednes­day.

For­mer chair­man of the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Self-Help Edgar Zephyrine walked out of the Port-of-Spain Prison in­to a wait­ing SUV short­ly af­ter 1 pm.

He did not stop to take any ques­tions af­ter leav­ing the prison es­cort­ed by an of­fi­cer.

Zephyrine had been placed on $1 mil­lion bail dur­ing Mon­day’s hear­ing. Zephyrine, 75, of Flagstaff Hill, St James faces 28 out of the 49 charges in the mat­ter — one con­spir­a­cy charge and 27 of­fences of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Mc­Don­ald’s long-time com­pan­ion Michael Carew, 72, and Wayne An­tho­ny, 66 were not so for­tu­nate as they once again spent an­oth­er evening in prison as their bail ap­pli­ca­tions were not processed.

On Mon­day, Vic­tor McEachrane was able to se­cure bail to the sum of $400,000 with his wife Cheryl McEachrane stand­ing as his sure­ty.

McEachrane, 65, of La Floris­sante in D’Abadie and Sou Sou Lands, To­ba­go, faces six charges in the mat­ter.

At­tor­neys for Carew and Wayne An­tho­ny, Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der and Frank Pe­ter­son had both stat­ed that the bail pro­cess­ing ap­peared to be a bit slow on Tues­day as the bailors did their re­spec­tive checks on the deeds pre­sent­ed to se­cure bail for the ac­cused. The process con­tin­ued to laboured on Wednes­day.

Carew, 72, faced eight charges ­—five for mon­ey laun­der­ing and three for con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud the state of T&T. He was placed on $500,000 bail.

An­tho­ny, 66, of San­ta Mar­gari­ta, St Au­gus­tine, faced one charge of mon­ey laun­der­ing was placed on $100,000 bail.