For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and UNC Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen are ex­pect­ed to make their first ap­pear­ance in court on charges over their role in a State le­gal fees kick­back scam on Mon­day.

When the duo ap­pears be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle in the Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court, it would be the first time that Ramdeen trades his usu­al place at the bar ta­ble for the pris­on­er’s en­clo­sure of the court.

Ram­lo­gan is no stranger to the pro­ce­dure hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly charged with wit­ness tam­per­ing in a defama­tion case against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. While ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is not ex­pect­ed for the hear­ing, it will no doubt at­tract the at­ten­tion of the duo’s col­leagues and Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers, who are ex­pect­ed to at­tend.

On Fri­day night, Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen were joint­ly charged with con­spir­ing to en­gage in cor­rup­tion, mon­ey laun­der­ing and mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.

Short­ly af­ter the charges were laid by of­fi­cers of the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau (ACIB) on Fri­day night, both men were grant­ed bail by a Jus­tice of the Peace. Ram­lo­gan was grant­ed $1.2 mil­lion bail, while Ramdeen’s was set at $1.5 mil­lion.

Dur­ing to­day’s hear­ing, Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle is ex­pect­ed to reg­u­larise their bail and for­mal­ly read the charges to them. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion cen­tres around al­most $1 bil­lion in le­gal fees which was paid to pri­vate le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers rep­re­sent­ing the State and State com­pa­nies in le­gal pro­ceed­ings dur­ing Ram­lo­gan’s tenure be­tween 2010 and 2015.

The law­suits fo­cussed on al­leged cor­rup­tion which oc­curred un­der the pre­vi­ous Patrick Man­ning-regime. While the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­spir­a­cy com­menced al­most three years ago, it reached a crit­i­cal stage last Wednes­day ar­rest­ed Ram­lo­gan at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, around 4.15 am. Ram­lo­gan was about to board a flight to Mi­a­mi to con­nect to the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI), where he was ex­pect­ed to rep­re­sent the Speak­er of BVI’s House As­sem­bly Ju­lian Wilcox. Ramdeen sur­ren­dered to in­ves­ti­ga­tors, about three hours lat­er.

That same day, po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at the duo’s homes in south Trinidad and at Ramdeen’s of­fice at Cor­ne­lio Street, Wood­brook. Last Thurs­day, British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, who has Ja­maican parent­age, ap­peared in court on three con­spir­a­cy charges over his role in the scheme. The charges are al­most iden­ti­cal to those that were laid against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.

Nel­son, who ben­e­fit­ed from over $20 mil­lion in le­gal briefs, has signed a plea bar­gain agree­ment, un­der which he is ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy against the duo in ex­change for im­mu­ni­ty or a re­duced sen­tence. He has been re­leased on $100,000 bail and al­lowed to leave the coun­try for med­ical treat­ment for can­cer. His lawyers al­so claimed that his safe­ty in T&T would be at risk.

Nel­son is sched­uled to re­turn to Trinidad with­in the next month for his plea as­sess­ment hear­ing be­fore a High Court Judge.

In an in­ter­view with me­dia per­son­nel af­ter Ram­lo­gan was re­leased on bail, his lawyer Pamela El­der, SC, said the charges were “noth­ing more than a con­spir­a­cy.”

“It is on­ly a con­spir­a­cy and there is noth­ing in any of these charges with re­spect to 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 re­ceived mon­ey but nev­er re­ceived a cent,” El­der said.