The plea agree­ment mat­ter in­volv­ing Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son, the state’s main wit­ness in the case against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and ex-Unit­ed Con­gress Sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen, failed to be­gin as planned yes­ter­day, as he 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.

Jus­tice Holdip was in­formed that be­cause of the late an­nounce­ment of the date for the hear­ing, Nel­son was un­able to re­turn to this coun­try in time for the pro­ceed­ings.

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 Ram­lo­gan and 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. He was al­so ac­cused of 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.

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

The Queen’s Coun­sel was grant­ed bail in the sum of $100,000 on his first ap­pear­ance and was al­lowed to re­turn to the UK af­ter his lawyers raised con­cerns about his health and per­son­al safe­ty.

In ac­cor­dance with the act, the mat­ter was moved past the pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry stage and trans­ferred to the High Court with­in two weeks, lead­ing to it be­ing called there yes­ter­day.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to June 4.