De Lorean will try to get $US5M bail cut

Press, 25 October 1982, Page 8

De Lorean will try to get $US5M bail cut

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles The car maker, John de Lorean, who is facing drugs charges, will go to court today to try to get his SUSS million bail reduced, his lawyer said yesterday.

The American businessman, aged 57, arrested in Los Angeles last Tuesday, had hoped to be free at the weekend. Instead, he remained in the Terminal Island prison, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. His lawyer, Joseph Ball, who has defended many celebrities, said that he expected de Lorean would be out of prison early this week. Legal aides denied any unexpected hitches had arisen in the efforts, led by de Lorean’s wife, fashion model Christina Ferrare, to

raise bail. They said that the problem was the vast amount of paper work needed to transfer property and other assets to the United States Government. De'Lorean also has to put up $U5250,000 in cash.

Informed sources said that the prosecutor, James Walsh, who has described de Lorean as an astronomical bail risk, would ask the presiding magistrate today to increase bail.

At de Lorean’s formal arraignment hearing on Wednesday, Mr Walsh asked that bail be set at ?US2O million.

De Lorean, charged with conspiring to possess cocaine with intent to distribute it, was alleged in a prosecution document submitted to the

court on Wednesday to have hoped to save his car factory in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with SUS6O million in profits from the sale of drugs. The British Government, which loaned de Lorean £BO million said that it was closing the factory, which bad been hit by the American sales slump.

De Lorean, whose property includes a 19-hectare estate in Escondido, California, is sharing his cell with another prisoner, said a prison spokeswoman. The cell has two bunks, a toilet and'a washbasin and de Lorean is wearing prison overalls along with other detainees.

The tall, grey-haired de Lorean is exercising regularly in the prison recreation

yard. Mr Ball, who visited de Lorean in prison yesterday, said: “He looks healthy and as agreeable as he could be under the circumstances.” In Cleveland, Ohio, the president of a loan brokerage firm, Midwest Funding and Development Company, said that they had negotiated a SUS2OO million loan for de Lorean only hours before his arrest. “The money had been made available by a lender, who pulled it off the market when de Lorean was arrested,” said the company president, Larry Watts. Potential buyers from America and Britain have expressed interest in reviving . the closed de Lorean sports car plant.