Trinidad: Companion of charged minister free after spending 11 days in jail

(Trinidad Guardian) Af­ter spend­ing al­most 11 days on re­mand, Michael Carew, the long-time com­pan­ion of for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was yes­ter­day able to ac­cess bail.

Sources told Guardian Me­dia that while Carew’s bailor was ap­proved by of­fi­cials at the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate’s Court on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, he was not im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased as there was a de­lay in trans­fer­ring the doc­u­ments to the Port-of-Spain State Prison.

The process was com­plet­ed yes­ter­day morn­ing and Carew was re­leased around mid­day.

Carew was the last of the four men, charged along­side Mc­Don­ald for cor­rup­tion and mon­ey laun­der­ing, to ac­cess bail.

Mc­Don­ald, Carew, Wayne An­tho­ny, Vic­tor McEachrane and Edgar Zephyrine are fac­ing 49 charges over at­tempts to de­fraud the gov­ern­ment by al­leg­ed­ly procur­ing funds 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 on­ly se­cured her free­dom last Fri­day from the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre where she was re­ceiv­ing med­ical treat­ment 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 slapped 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.

An­tho­ny was on­ly able to ac­cess his bail on Wednes­day.

Since be­ing charged, Mc­Don­ald was re­moved as Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). She re­mains Port-of-Spain South MP.

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