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Thursday, August 21, 2025

DPP on e-mail probe: COPS can't do it alone

by

20130524

The is­sues raised in the 31 e-mails read by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing a Par­lia­ment sit­ting on Mon­day ought to be thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice in tan­dem with an in­de­pen­dent foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion team, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard, SC, said yes­ter­day.Gas­pard broke his si­lence on the now con­tro­ver­sial is­sue in press re­lease.

"Cir­cum­spec­tion be­ing the touch­stone, I am of the re­spect­ful view that these are not al­le­ga­tions which can be slain by any­thing oth­er than a full, thor­ough and in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion," he said.

The e-mails, ac­cord­ing to Row­ley, were sent to him by a "whis­tle-blow­er" and raised is­sues of pos­si­ble wrong­do­ing by sev­er­al high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act. The e-mails were pur­port­ed to have come from e-mail ad­dress­es be­long­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Gary Grif­fith.

The PM and her col­leagues have de­nied any knowl­edge of the e-mails or of send­ing them, say­ing Row­ley mis­led the House and fab­ri­cat­ed the e-mails.How­ev­er, af­ter Row­ley re­leased the con­tents of the e-mails to the House, Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams ask­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Williams then ap­point­ed his deputy, Mervyn Richard­son, to head the probe.

Yes­ter­day, Gas­pard, whose of­fice is tasked with over­see­ing the pros­e­cu­tion process, said he had lis­tened to the re­spec­tive con­tri­bu­tions made by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and ap­prised him­self of the me­dia re­ports and al­so read the e-mails in ques­tion.

"The con­tents of the e-mails dis­close acts and in­ten­tions, which, if true, have the like­ly po­ten­tial to un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the hold­ers of high of­fices...al­ter­na­tive­ly, if false, the ef­fects are un­like­ly to be any less dele­te­ri­ous. Ac­cord­ing­ly, this mat­ter has at­tract­ed the deep, grave and abid­ing con­cern of my of­fice," the DPP said.

The DPP said af­ter a meet­ing with Richard­son and a key mem­ber of the in­ves­tiga­tive team yes­ter­day, it be­came ev­i­dent "that the head­quar­ters of some of the rel­e­vant e-mail providers are lo­cat­ed with­in the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca."He said be­cause of this, the Po­lice Ser­vice may be sin­gu­lar­ly and par­tic­u­lar­ly ham­strung in their at­tempts, though gal­lant, to con­duct a full and through in­ves­ti­ga­tion."

Gas­pard said the Po­lice Ser­vice Act al­lows lo­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tors to seek the as­sis­tance of their for­eign coun­ter­parts."It seems plain there­fore, giv­en the nov­el­ty and mag­ni­tude which de­fine the perime­ter of this in­ves­ti­ga­tion, that there is a burn­ing need to en­gage the ser­vices of uni­ver­sal­ly her­ald­ed and cred­i­ble pro­fes­sion­als, who have the re­quired ex­pe­ri­ence in both foren­sic analy­sis in the rel­e­vant for­eign ju­ris­dic­tion as well as in the con­duct­ing of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in mat­ters of this type," he said.

One of the e-mails al­so re­vealed a plot to re­move Gas­pard from of­fice. As a re­sult of this, Gas­pard said he felt du­ty-bound to re­cuse him­self from of­fer­ing ad­vice to the po­lice in the mat­ter "so that the pub­lic may feel that jus­tice has not on­ly been done, but is seen to be done."Thus, I have del­e­gat­ed to Deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of ad­vis­ing the po­lice in this mat­ter," he said.

MORE IN­FO

Re­spond­ing to Gas­pard's re­lease yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said he has been mak­ing "the call for the po­lice to bring in in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tors."In a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian last night, Ram­lo­gan said the Po­lice Ser­vice Act al­lows the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to con­tract peo­ple with the rel­e­vant ex­per­tise to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions."I sup­port this call. It is one I have been mak­ing," he said.

The AG said, how­ev­er, that the Po­lice Ser­vice is the most ap­pro­pri­ate agency to con­duct the in­ves­ti­ga­tion."The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is lim­it­ed to breach­es in the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. The al­le­ga­tions made con­cerns the pos­si­ble com­mis­sion of se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fences and the prop­er law­ful au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate the com­mis­sion of crim­i­nal of­fences is the Po­lice Ser­vice," Ram­lo­gan said.


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