Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, has dis­con­tin­ued cor­rup­tion charges against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and for­mer Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Gas­pard an­nounced his de­ci­sion dur­ing a sta­tus hear­ing of the duo's case be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle, a short while ago.

Gas­pard ex­plained that his de­ci­sion was based on the re­fusal of the State's main wit­ness in the case, King's Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, to tes­ti­fy be­fore the de­ter­mi­na­tion of his civ­il law­suit over an in­dem­ni­ty agree­ment with for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

In the law­suit, Nel­son is claim­ing that the agree­ment was giv­en to him be­fore he agreed to im­pli­cate the duo and was sub­se­quent­ly breached.

Gas­pard stat­ed it would not be fair to have the duo "in lim­bo" while Nel­son is pur­su­ing his lit­i­ga­tion and not­ed that the charges may be re­in­stat­ed once it is com­plet­ed.

The duo was then dis­charged by Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle.

On May 2, 2019, Nel­son, Ram­lo­gan, and Ramdeen were slapped with three cor­rup­tion charges.

The trio was ac­cused of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to re­ceive, con­ceal and trans­fer crim­i­nal prop­er­ty name­ly the re­wards giv­en to Ram­lo­gan by Nel­son for be­ing ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent the State in sev­er­al cas­es; of con­spir­ing to­geth­er to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan a per­cent­age of the funds, and of con­spir­ing with to make Ram­lo­gan mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing the funds.

It was lat­er re­vealed that Nel­son had en­tered in­to a plea agree­ment with the DPP's Of­fice in ex­change for his tes­ti­mo­ny against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

For­mer High Court Judge and cur­rent Ap­pel­late Judge Mal­colm Holdip up­held the plea agree­ment and is­sued a to­tal of $2.25 mil­lion in fines to Nel­son for his role in the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Holdip fined Nel­son $250,000 for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen, to breach Sec­tion 3 of the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act, which crim­i­nal­izes cor­rup­tion through bribery.

He was fined $2 mil­lion for al­leged­ly con­spir­ing with the duo to breach Sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, which crim­i­nal­izes the con­ceal­ment of the pro­ceeds of crime.

Un­der his plea agree­ment, the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mis­be­hav­ior in pub­lic of­fice charge was dropped.

As part of his sen­tence, Jus­tice Holdip said that Nel­son, who had been in pro­tec­tive cus­tody dur­ing his vis­its to Trinidad for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and sen­tenc­ing, was free to re­turn to the Unit­ed King­dom while he cleared the fines un­der a 10-month court-ap­proved pay­ment plan.

He was al­so placed on a $250,000 bond to keep the peace for three years.