Edward Hadeed, Cosbert Sergeant, Aliegh Byers, and Jamal Kane are now on bail after being charged in a long-running probe into allegations of conspiracy regarding the proceeds of crime and money laundering.

Only Hadeed and Sergeant are in Antigua and Barbuda while Byers is overseas. He has indicated through their attorneys however that they would return to Antigua and Barbuda to face the charges leveled against them

The matter is in relation to illegal actions committed between August 10th, 2007, and July 25th, 2017.

Last week Friday, they were each charged with four counts of conspiracy, while Cain and Byers are facing additional charges of money laundering.

They were each granted station bail in the sum of $20,000. Part of their bail condition is that they must report to the Langfords police station every week, surrender their passports, and must not interfere with any known witnesses.

Meanwhile, attorneys representing the men say it is an abuse of process as their clients were only charged last week since the six-year status of or statute of limitation would have expired yesterday.

Wendell Robinson and Michael Archibald submitted legal arguments that this is an abuse of the process, given that the last alleged offense took place in 2017.

“I made Oral Submissions to which Archibald supported me that the case is an abuse of the process of the court as it is statute barred and the charges are vague to the extent that they do not specify an offense… accordingly the Defence argues that the Money Laundering Prevention Act 1996 as amended by the 2020 amendment makes the charges 6 years old; that some of the defendants were charged for identical offenses as early as 2012 and those charges were dismissed in 2013 after the defendants spent some 10 months in prison

To turn around to charge them 10 years later for the same offense, Robinson argued amounts to “nincompoop” behavior on the path of ONDCP!

“There is not a more blatant and ridiculous case of abuse of process argued Robinson, quoting sections of the Money Laundering Prevention Act to validate his point,” he said

The prosecution is given 3 weeks to disclose all their evidence so far and the Defence is expecting to file written submissions one week after, seeking to have the charges thrown out.

Michael Archibald represents Hadeed, while Robinson represents Sergeant and Byer.

The matter was adjourned until October 16th, 2023.