The State’s case against for­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, her com­pan­ion Michael Carew and long-time friend Vic­tor McEachrane and two oth­ers is based on the dis­burse­ment of mil­lions of dol­lars from the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to two en­ti­ties.

In 2007, Mc­Don­ald was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and Gen­der Af­fairs. She al­so served as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Min­is­ter of Hous­ing be­tween 2015 and 2019.

The Fraud Squad in­ves­ti­ga­tion cen­tres around ap­pli­ca­tions for fund­ing made by three en­ti­ties to the Mc­Don­ald’s min­istry.

Those three en­ti­ties were linked to Michael Carew, Wayne An­tho­ny and Vic­tor McEachrane. The four men and Mc­Don­ald all share a close per­son­al re­la­tion­ship.

These bod­ies—Cal­abar Foun­da­tion, the Wa­ter­wheel Foun­da­tion and the Prov­i­dent Foun­da­tion—made ap­pli­ca­tions to the Min­istry, the min­istry ap­proved the ap­pli­ca­tion and dis­bursed the funds to the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Records from the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry show Carew, McEachrane were reg­is­tered as di­rec­tors of Cal­abar. The five ac­cused, Edgar Zephyrine, was then a di­rec­tor of Wa­ter­wheel Foun­da­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the charges, the mon­ey was de­posit­ed at three fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and at var­i­ous times funds were with­drawn by the in­di­vid­u­als linked to the NGOs.

This is the chal­lenge the State will have to face is in prov­ing its case.

The crux of the case fol­lows a sim­i­lar pat­tern to the al­leged scheme in­volv­ing kick­backs from le­gal fees cor­rup­tion charges against for­mer UNC sen­a­tor Ger­ald Ramdeen and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.

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

Sim­i­lar charges were laid against the state’s co­op­er­at­ing wit­ness British Queen’s Coun­sel Vin­cent Nel­son. Nel­son has signed a plea agree­ment and is ex­pect­ed to tes­ti­fy against Ram­lo­gan and Ramdeen.