The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion yes­ter­day said it was com­mit­ted to the free­dom of the press in T&T. It said how­ev­er that it was forced to re­quest a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to sys­tem­at­ic leak­age of in­for­ma­tion to the me­dia. Fol­low­ing is the full text of the com­mis­sion's state­ment, which comes in the wake of po­lice raids on the of­fices of News­day and the home of its re­porter An­dre Ba­goo on Thurs­day. A free and in­de­pen­dent me­dia is one of the cor­ner­stones of our Con­sti­tu­tion and our democ­ra­cy. The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is ful­ly com­mit­ted to this fun­da­men­tal con­cept and as­serts that it must not be com­pro­mised in any way.

Equal­ly, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is a fun­da­men­tal in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion cre­at­ed by the Con­sti­tu­tion. Its work is found­ed in its abil­i­ty to pre­serve the con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of mat­ters be­fore it so that jus­tice and eq­ui­ty are served. This is a ba­sic tenet of its op­er­a­tions. The com­mis­sion re­grets that this con­fi­den­tial­i­ty has been com­pro­mised by an on­go­ing and wors­en­ing pat­tern of leaks to the me­dia over an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od; con­duct which is both de­struc­tive and il­le­gal. It has there­fore been forced to re­quest a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion to un­earth the facts sur­round­ing this sys­tem­at­ic leak­age and plug the leaks. The Com­mis­sion is not in a po­si­tion to di­rect the man­ner of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.