A po­lice of­fi­cer has been as­signed to speak with PNM MP for Port-of-Spain South Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald to see if she’s will­ing to give a state­ment on her claim that Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had tipped her off that po­lice would have been com­ing to ar­rest her.

Guardian Me­dia con­firmed this from re­li­able po­lice sources yes­ter­day.

It’s the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in the mat­ter af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, on Sep­tem­ber 9 claimed Per­sad-Bisses­sar tipped off Mc­Don­ald about her Au­gust ar­rest by po­lice.

Mc­Don­ald was charged on Au­gust 10 with sev­en al­leged cor­rup­tion charges in­clud­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing. Four oth­er peo­ple are al­so on a to­tal of 49 charges.

Af­ter Row­ley’s claim, Mc­Don­ald con­firmed that four to five weeks be­fore her ar­rest, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had told her po­lice were “com­ing for her.”

Mc­Don­ald said she called At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Stu­art Young on it. Al-Rawi con­firmed she called him.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mained mum af­ter Row­ley and Mc­Don­ald’s claims.

Her at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan said she had a right to do so.

Last week­end sources point­ed Guardian Me­dia to Sec­tion 51 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act (1-6).

That states that tip­ping off a per­son whom po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing or plan to (in mon­ey laun­der­ing mat­ters) is an of­fence.

Po­lice told Guardian Me­dia that ca­su­al ban­ter wouldn’t meet the act’s thresh­old but a se­ri­ous warn­ing would and if Mc­Don­ald’s claim was true, crim­i­nal of­fence could arise. They said ques­tions had to be an­swered “ahead.”

The Guardian sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed se­nior po­lice had as­signed a fe­male of­fi­cer to see if Mc­Don­ald would be will­ing to give a re­port on her claim.

Yes­ter­day they couldn’t say if the of­fi­cer has met with her yet.

How­ev­er, sources close to Mc­Don­ald said yes­ter­day she hadn’t been called up­on by po­lice. Mc­Don­ald hasn’t been speak­ing since the furore broke. She said last week that her at­tor­neys have banned her from speak­ing.

Af­ter Row­ley sar­cas­ti­cal­ly not­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s si­lence on Mon­day, she sub­se­quent­ly re­ferred to the mat­ter dur­ing a UNC meet­ing in Wednes­day. But she on­ly said she had no fur­ther in­ten­tion of talk­ing fur­ther about “Mar­leneGate”, the mat­ter is sub ju­dice and be­ing a lawyer, she didn’t “want to put her mouth in that.”

Both Mc­Don­ald and Per­sad-Bisses­sar are ex­pect­ed in Par­lia­ment to­day. Mc­Don­ald hasn’t at­tend­ed since Par­lia­ment went on re­cess in Ju­ly. She skipped the last few sit­tings af­ter be­ing charged.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar who was ab­sent last week, is ex­pect­ed to at­tend, since her pri­vate mo­tion seek­ing to de­bate re­peal of the Sedi­tion Bill is list­ed on to­day’s Low­er House agen­da.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar filed the mo­tion re­cent­ly fol­low­ing pub­lic de­bate on the sedi­tion law when pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Wat­son Duke was charged un­der the Sedi­tion Act.

The Op­po­si­tion and oth­er quar­ters con­tend that the law is out­dat­ed. Gov­ern­ment ini­tial­ly stonewalled on the is­sue, but sub­se­quent­ly said it was “open to re­view” of the bill. How­ev­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have al­so stat­ed there’s been no sign of pro­posed al­ter­na­tives to the bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s mo­tion is last on the agen­da. If it aris­es she’ll have to give a five minute sub­mis­sion on why it should be de­bat­ed and the House—con­trolled by Gov­ern­ment—has to vote on it. UNC whip David Lee said yes­ter­day since it’s not a nor­mal mo­tion, based on Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders (Reg­u­la­tions) it’ll be a pri­or­i­ty.