Bail woes for former Trinidad minister’s companion

(Trinidad Guardian) For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald’s long-time com­pan­ion Michael Carew and an­oth­er man charged along­side the cou­ple for cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing, are yet to ac­cess bail.

Al­though Mc­Don­ald, Carew, Vic­tor McEachrane, Edgar Zephyrine and Wayne An­tho­ny were all grant­ed bail when they ap­peared be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle in the Port-of-Spain Magistrate’s Court, last Mon­day, on­ly Mc­Don­ald, Zephyrine and McEachrane were able to ac­cess their bail at the end of last week.

Sources at the court said that Carew and An­tho­ny’s rel­a­tives at­tempt­ed to get ap­proval of the bail, last Fri­day and yes­ter­day, but were turned away as the Clerk of the Peace as­signed to the court was ab­sent from work. They are ex­pect­ed to try again, to­day.

The two el­der­ly men, who spent the past week on re­mand at the Port-of-Spain State Prison, were not the on­ly ones af­fect­ed by the sit­u­a­tion as every­one who was grant­ed bail at the court dur­ing the pe­ri­od was in a sim­i­lar po­si­tion.

The group is fac­ing 49 charges over at­tempts to de­fraud the gov­ern­ment by al­leged­ly procur­ing funds for Carew’s Cal­abar Foun­da­tion, un­der the guise that it was a char­i­ty.

Mc­Don­ald, 61, is fac­ing sev­en charges: two for con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud, four for mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and one for mon­ey laun­der­ing. She was grant­ed $2 mil­lion bail and was on­ly se­cured her free­dom last Fri­day from the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre where she was warded af­ter be­ing charged last Sun­day.

Carew, 72, was slapped with eight charges-three con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and five mon­ey laun­der­ing. He was grant­ed $500,000 bail.

Zephyrine, 75, the for­mer chair­man of the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Self Help, was charged with 28 charges: one for con­spir­a­cy to de­fraud and 27 mon­ey laun­der­ing. He was grant­ed $1 mil­lion bail.

McEachrane was slapped with three fraud charges and three mon­ey laun­der­ing charges, while An­tho­ny was charged with one mon­ey laun­der­ing of­fence. McEachrane and An­tho­ny were both were grant­ed $400,000 and $100,000 bail, re­spec­tive­ly.

McEachrane was the first to ac­cess his bail as it was ap­proved with­in hours of the group’s court appearance. Two days lat­er, Zephyrine ac­cessed his.

Mc­Don­ald fell ill be­fore her ini­tial court ap­pear­ance and bail was grant­ed in her ab­sence.

The group is sched­uled to reap­pear be­fore Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle on Sep­tem­ber 9.