The plea agree­ment mat­ter in­volv­ing Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son failed to be­gin as planned Thurs­day, as Nel­son was un­able to ar­rive in this coun­try in time for the hear­ing.

The mat­ter came up for hear­ing be­fore High Court judge Mal­colm Holdip at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port of Spain at 2 pm., but the court learned that Nel­son was yet to re­turn to this coun­try from the Unit­ed King­dom.

On May 2, Nel­son, 61, ac­cept­ed a plea deal af­ter he was charged with three of­fences re­lat­ed to the al­leged kick­back of mil­lions of dol­lars in le­gal fees to for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen.

Nel­son was ac­cused of con­spir­ing with Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen 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 as well as con­spir­ing with them to cor­rupt­ly give Ram­lo­gan some of the funds and of con­spir­ing with them to make Ram­lo­gan mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice by re­ceiv­ing some of the funds.

He plead­ed guilty to the charges be­fore Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by Ear­le-Cad­dle and agreed to be a part the State's main wit­ness in their case against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen un­der the Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure (Plea Dis­cus­sion and Plea Agree­ment) Act 2017, which was pro­claimed in Jan­u­ary.

Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen were al­so hit with three con­spir­a­cy charges in re­la­tion to kick­backs one day af­ter Nel­son's ap­pear­ance in court.