Five men from east Port-of-Spain have been each grant­ed $250,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court on gang and car theft charges.

Calvin “Tyson” Lee, 32, of Clifton Hill Tow­ers, St Paul Street, Port-of- Spain; Akiel “Bo­lo” Hov­el, 28, of Des­per­lie Cres­cent, Laven­tille; Dwayne “Docs” Skeete, 35, of Anisette Street, Laven­tille; Ker­win “Joey” Williams, 24, of St John Road, Laven­tille; and An­tho­ny “Mas­ter Cain” Cain, of Pel­i­can Ex­ten­sion, Trou Macque, Laven­tille were grant­ed bail when they ap­peared vir­tu­al­ly be­fore Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo.

Lee was charged with be­ing the leader of a gang, while his co-ac­cused were charged with sup­port­ing it.

All five men were al­so charged for re­ceiv­ing a stolen ve­hi­cle.

The group, which was ar­rest­ed dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise, last week, was not called up­on to plead to the charges.

The charges against the men came days be­fore the con­tro­ver­sial An­ti-Gang Act is due to lapse on Sun­day.

An ex­ten­sion of the leg­is­la­tion, which con­tained a sun­set clause and re­quired a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment, was not sup­port­ed by the Op­po­si­tion, last week.

The lapse in the leg­is­la­tion does not mean that the charges would be dis­missed against the group, next Mon­day, as they can still be pros­e­cut­ed as they were laid while the leg­is­la­tion was valid law.

The group is ex­pect­ed to reap­pear in court on De­cem­ber 15.

One ac­cused was rep­re­sent­ed by Richard Clarke-Wills, while Rus­sell Warn­er rep­re­sent­ed the oth­ers.