Clough out on bail

IT IS said 'good friends are better than pocket money' and attorney-at-law Raymond Clough can attest to that. On Monday evening, a friend he has known for 30 years used his St. Andrew home to post a $5 million bail bond for the accused lawyer who is charged with fraudulent conversion.

Mr. Clough, who was offered bail last Friday in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court at Half-Way Tree, spent the weekend in jail but was released on Monday.

Managing director of the Sutton Place Hotel, Dermot Blake, went to the lawyer's rescue because he had known him for a long time, he told court officials. As result, on Monday, the hotelier gave court officials the title for his Norbrook home to use as collateral to secure Mr. Clough's release. Last Thursday, detectives from the Fraud Squad in Kingston charged the lawyer with fraudulently converting $4.6 million belonging to Kingston businessman, Indru Khemlani.

On June 21, Mr. Clough, who had taken out an injunction barring The Gleaner from printing a story about the accusation for which he's before the court, opted not to oppose the newspaper's application to discharge the injunction which the Supreme Court granted him last week Friday.

The injunction barred the publication of a news story on Mr. Khemlani's allegations that he had been defrauded $4.6 million. Chief Justice Lensley Wolfe discharged the seven-day ex parte injunction last Thursday after the accused lawyer was detained by Fraud Squad detectives but was later released at the Supreme Court building that afternoon.

Mr. Clough is to return to court on July 20.

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