TT$3M bail for Ramlogan, Ramdeen

(Trinidad Guardian) For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and his col­league, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Congress Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, were col­lec­tive­ly grant­ed close to $3 mil­lion in bail Fri­day night, after be­ing charged with sim­i­lar con­spir­a­cy of­fences re­lat­ed to an al­leged le­gal fees kick­back scheme.

Ram­lo­gan was grant­ed bail to cov­er three charges in the sum of $1.2 mil­lion ac­cord­ing to his at­tor­ney Pamela El­der SC. Ramdeen was al­so grant­ed bail in the sum of $1.5 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, af­ter they se­cured bail around 10.32 pm, both men were hus­tled out of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACIB) on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain, in a black Toy­ota Pra­do that was al­lowed to dri­ve in­to the back en­trance park­ing lot along George Street.

CNC3 cam­era­man Kevin Ma­haraj was the on­ly per­son able to cap­ture Ram­lo­gan, who was dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt, walk­ing to the ve­hi­cle and climb­ing in­to the ve­hi­cle’s back seat. With­in moments, the SUV then emerged from the car park af­ter an of­fi­cer pulled the steel gate to al­low it out and the dri­ver then sped south along the north­bound George Street on­to South Quay and dis­ap­peared.

Mo­ments lat­er, Ram­lo­gan’s at­tor­ney, El­der, emerged through the ACIB front en­trance and spoke briefly with the me­dia.

El­der gave some de­tails of what Ram­lo­gan ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing the day.

“My client was sub­ject­ed to a very long in­ter­view. It has end­ed with him be­ing charged with three offences. What I find in­ter­est­ing is that all these of­fences are what we call in­choate of­fences, they are the on­ly con­spir­a­cies. There is noth­ing here in these charges that my client re­ceived any mon­ey. No mon­ey has been stat­ed here,” El­der told Guardian Me­dia.

She con­tin­ued, “It is on­ly a con­spir­a­cy and there is noth­ing in any of these charges with re­spect of any monies that were paid to Anand Ram­lo­gan, re­ceived by Anand Ram­lo­gan or trans­ferred by Anand Ramlo­gan. In essence, it states that for five years he con­spired to re­ceive mon­ey but nev­er re­ceived a cent.”

How­ev­er, El­der in­di­cat­ed that Ram­lo­gan was glad to be fi­nal­ly re­leased.

“Un­der­stand­ably, he had been de­tained for over 70-some­thing hours and he was ea­ger to go home. The po­lice of­fi­cers were pro­fes­sion­al and we have no com­plaints about their treat­ment,” El­der said.

The charges for Ram­lo­gan oc­curred be­tween Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 1, 2010 to Sep­tem­ber 9, 2015.

They charges were:

* Con­spired with Vin­cent Nel­son to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, to wit fi­nan­cial rewards giv­en to the said Anand Ram­lo­gan by the said Vin­cent Nel­son, for the said Vin­cent Nel­son be­ing in­struct­ed as ad­vo­cate in var­i­ous mat­ters in which the State was in­ter­est­ed or which the State was the client.

* Con­spired with Vin­cent Nel­son to cor­rupt­ly re­ceive fi­nan­cial re­wards from the said Vin­cent Nel­son, being in­struct­ed as ad­vo­cate in var­i­ous mat­ters in which the State was in­ter­est­ed or in which the State was client.

* Con­spired with Vin­cent Nel­son that the said Anand Ram­lo­gan mis­be­haved in the pub­lic of­fice of attorney gen­er­al by Anand Ram­lo­gan ac­cept­ing re­wards from Vin­cent Nel­son, for the said Vin­cent Nelson be­ing in­struct­ed as ad­vo­cate in var­i­ous mat­ters in which the State was in­ter­est­ed or in which the State was client.