~ Prosecutors Office playing games with the release of the MP by setting time.~ MP Emmanuel finally released.
PHILIPSBURG: --- Member of Parliament Christopher Emmanuel has been released from pretrial detention on today Friday. Even though the release order was issued Friday morning the Prosecutors Office instructed that the prison release MP Emmanuel and Marisha Richardson at 12:30 pm. SMN News managed to confirm that MP Emmanuel was finally released from detention.
SMN News learned that the Prosecutors Office already gave the order for MP Emmanuel release but indicated that he must not be released before 12: 30 pm today.
SMN News contacted the spokesperson for the Prosecutor’s Office Hazel Durand who said the Prosecutor’s Office is busy with it but she could not confirm if the release order was given. A statement from the Public Prosecutor's Office states the following: The Public Prosecution Service has discontinued the pre-trial detention of suspects C.T.E. and M.A.R., because the pre-trial detention is no longer needed for the investigation. Today the questioning of 2 witnesses and a suspect was successfully completed before 12:30 pm. This was the most important reason for the detention of the suspects. Subsequently, the suspects have been released. The investigation will continue.
SMN News also learned that a release order was also given for Emmanuel’s former chief of cabinet Marisha Richardson but she too will be released at 12:30 pm.
Emmanuel and his former chief of cabinet Marisha Richardson were arrested early Tuesday morning after a team of detectives from the Landsrecherche and Prosecutors searched their homes.
Emmanuel and Richardson are suspects in the Begonia investigation the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday that the two were arrested on suspicion of abuse of function and forgery or complicity in such acts, during their tenure at VROMI. The suspects are accused of unlawfully long leasing government land to acquaintances at the end of their tenure in 2017. As a result, other applicants were disadvantaged.
MP Emmanuel is a candidate for the Ministerial post of VSA, and also an MP that supports the new coalition of 9. Already persons within the community have expressed their opinion that the sudden raid of MP Emmanuel home is an interference in the democratic process since the fall of the UD/SMCP coalition.
As soon as Emmanuel and Richardson are released from Pointe Blanche House of Detention this article will be updated.
