At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan yes­ter­day re­fut­ed claims by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the le­gal let­ters he sent to Row­ley were filed on be­half of the Of­fice of the AG. Row­ley had claimed at a news con­fer­ence on Mon­day that the AG was us­ing State funds to ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion against him while he had to re­spond in a per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty.

A state­ment from Ram­lo­gan's of­fice yes­ter­day said that was not so and the mat­ters were be­ing filed by Ram­lo­gan in his pri­vate ca­pac­i­ty. It added: "These (pre-ac­tion pro­to­col) let­ters were plain­ly is­sued on be­half of the AG in his per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty as a pri­vate cit­i­zen.

"This was done in the face of ad­vice giv­en to the State that the AG would be well with­in his rights to pur­sue these claims for defama­tion in his of­fi­cial ca­pac­i­ty us­ing state re­sources be­cause the defam­a­to­ry state­ments... re­lat­ed to the per­for­mance in his of­fi­cial du­ties as AG." The re­lease said Ram­lo­gan had re­tained the ser­vices of the at­tor­ney act­ing on his be­half in those mat­ters.

The re­lease was is­sued in the name of Ram­lo­gan's ad­vis­er, Hansen Stew­art. It added: "In his naked at­tempt to prej­u­dice the pub­lic psy­che (if not the court), Dr Row­ley not on­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the sub­ject mat­ter that re­sult­ed in these defama­tion law­suits but com­mit­ted a fur­ther li­bel up­on Mr Ram­lo­gan by al­leg­ing mis­use of State re­sources."

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion MP Don­na Cox says the Women's League of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment stood in sup­port of Row­ley. Cox, who is la­dy vice chair­man of the par­ty, said the league was call­ing on cit­i­zens to raise their voic­es in de­nounc­ing and re­ject­ing the AG's at­tempts to in­tim­i­date and muz­zle Row­ley.

Ram­lo­gan is­sued the pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters over Row­ley's al­le­ga­tions about his role in the ex­tra­di­tion mat­ter in­volv­ing busi­ness­men Steve Fer­gu­son and Ish Gal­barans­ingh, the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) and the in­crease in fi­nan­cial al­lo­ca­tions for se­lect­ed at­tor­neys con­tract­ed on be­half of the State.