The An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau yes­ter­day can­celled a planned vis­it to the T&T Guardian's news­room. On Wednes­day two mem­bers of the ACIB came to the news­pa­per's St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain of­fices to in­ves­ti­gate a sto­ry that re­port­ed on a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­ests in­volv­ing In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken Gor­don.

Asst Supt An­tho­ny Buc­chan gave in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford, who wrote the sto­ry, an hour's no­tice of Wednes­day's vis­it. How­ev­er, when they ar­rived, the po­lice were asked to post­pone that in­ter­view with her un­til a Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) at­tor­ney could be present. The in­ter­view was resched­uled to yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In the mean­time, GML's lawyers JD Sel­l­i­er & Co wrote to Buc­chan to protest at the short no­tice of his vis­it and to ask the pur­pose of it. The let­ter al­so told the ACIB that GML and its re­porter had no in­ten­tion of dis­clos­ing the source of the in­for­ma­tion in the sto­ry or any oth­er news sto­ry pub­lished by GML.

It point­ed out that it was a fun­da­men­tal right of any jour­nal­ist or me­dia house to refuse to dis­close the source of their in­for­ma­tion, and that the im­por­tance of the me­dia in con­tribut­ing to the free flow of in­for­ma­tion and to de­bate of mat­ters of pub­lic con­cern had al­ways been recog­nised by the courts.

Buc­chan replied by e-mail yes­ter­day to say he would not be vis­it­ing the Guardian again af­ter all, and told the news­pa­per's lawyers their let­ter had been in­struc­tive. Pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, Gumbs-San­di­ford's sto­ry re­port­ed that Gor­don had asked the com­mis­sion if the print­ery owned by him­self and his son Rhett could ten­der for work from the com­mis­sion. The com­mis­sion's le­gal ad­vis­er replied that to do so would raise ques­tions of a con­flict of in­ter­est and nepo­tism.

In Feb­ru­ary, the ACIB raid­ed News­day's of­fices and re­porter An­dre Ba­goo's home. They seized his com­put­ers and cell­phones and a marked po­lice car was seen wait­ing for hours out­side his house. Ba­goo had re­fused to re­veal the source of a sto­ry he had writ­ten about a row be­tween Gor­don and sus­pend­ed In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion mem­ber Gladys Gafoor.