Richard Lord

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is con­fi­dent a com­pro­mise will be reached with po­lice to al­low for his cell­phone and oth­er elec­tron­ic de­vices to be hand­ed over soon to in­ves­ti­gate the Sec­tion 34 e-mail mat­ter.But he is in­sist­ing that on­ly an in­ter­na­tion­al IT ex­pert will be al­lowed to look at them be­cause he is not con­fi­dent the po­lice will en­sure the in­for­ma­tion re­mains con­fi­den­tial. In fact, he fears his con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion might be leaked and used against him on a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment plat­form.Ram­lo­gan said so in re­sponse to ques­tions from re­porters dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice in St Clair."In the cur­rent cli­mate there are cur­rent in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices, pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures that must be fol­lowed in cir­cum­stances such as these," he said.

He said his lawyer Pamela El­der, SC, had re­fused to hand over his de­vices on Tues­day be­cause the prop­er arrange­ments were not in place for their safe­ty and in­tegri­ty. Once prop­er arrange­ments were put in place, the de­vices would be hand­ed over, he said.But he in­sist­ed no lo­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tor will be al­lowed to look at the de­vices."I have no dif­fi­cul­ty [with] an in­ter­na­tion­al IT ex­pert whose cred­i­bil­i­ty and rep­u­ta­tion are be­yond re­proach and ques­tion go­ing through my stuff," Ram­lo­gan said."The agree­ment is, that is the on­ly per­son that can go through the equip­ment. I have no dif­fi­cul­ty with that, but I have a se­ri­ous prob­lem with any­body else go­ing through your busi­ness that con­tains any­thing and every­thing."Ram­lo­gan said his rea­son for adopt­ing that stance was ob­vi­ous."We are all hu­man be­ings and we have a pri­vate life, a per­son­al life, but more than that, we have a pro­fes­sion­al life as a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter. I am the AG of the coun­try, I sit on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil."

Dur­ing the 2011 state of emer­gency, he said, he went on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion and in­vit­ed cit­i­zens to e-mail and in­box him on Face­book their sug­ges­tions to fight crime."A lot of that in­tel­li­gence was pre­sent­ed by or­di­nary cit­i­zens and the spec­trum is very wide–in­clud­ing in­side the Po­lice Ser­vice, out­side the Po­lice Ser­vice, drug blocks, et cetera."Ram­lo­gan said he had "to be very care­ful in my deal­ings with oth­er coun­tries, oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al law-en­force­ment agen­cies, that the sanc­ti­ty and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of those com­mu­ni­ca­tions are not un­wit­ting­ly com­pro­mised."

He said he had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure the iden­ti­ty and con­tent of cor­re­spon­dence from those peo­ple were pro­tect­ed.He in­sist­ed: "If the Po­lice Ser­vice se­lects an in­ter­na­tion­al IT ex­pert whose rep­u­ta­tion, cre­den­tials and cred­i­bil­i­ty are be­yond ques­tion, I will give them all the de­vices."

Speak­ing on be­half of him­self, the Prime Min­is­ter and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, he said: "We are not sus­pects in any crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. We are in fact vol­un­tar­i­ly co-op­er­at­ing with the po­lice be­cause we feel that we are the vic­tims of a mas­sive po­lit­i­cal fraud and con­spir­a­cy...we would like to get to the truth, so that the per­pe­tra­tor of that po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy and fraud can be caught, charged and pros­e­cut­ed and that is why we are co-op­er­at­ing."He said every­one had a right to pri­va­cy "and my right to pri­va­cy is not less be­cause I am a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and nor will I wish it in any way to hin­der an in­ves­ti­ga­tion."Ram­lo­gan said he was pre­pared to give the de­vices to the po­lice but not in a carte-blanche man­ner with­out any rules and pro­ce­dures that ob­tained in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

He ex­plained: "There may be things on my sys­tem that per­tains to the Po­lice Ser­vice it­self, per­tain­ing to cor­rupt of­fi­cers, cor­rup­tion with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice and so on."So I have to be very care­ful. You don't just use this as a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty to have some­body sit­ting down and go­ing through all your busi­ness, on­ly to per­haps get po­lit­i­cal am­mu­ni­tion to slip to the PNM, so it comes up on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, or to have any po­lice of­fi­cer or any cit­i­zen sus­pect­ed of be­ing in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty sud­den­ly dis­ap­pear from the scene."He added: "It is not a very sim­ple mat­ter, it is a very com­pli­cat­ed mat­ter. It can be made very sim­ple if the po­lice have a de­fined and clear pro­ce­dure and prac­tice and pro­to­col."He said things had been made worse by the po­lice fail­ing to ho­n­our a promise to re­turn the de­vices of Gary Grif­fith, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter. Ram­lo­gan said Grif­fith's de­vices had been in the hands of the po­lice for about a month."That is un­for­giv­able in the cir­cum­stances, when some­one is vol­un­tar­i­ly co-op­er­at­ing in a sit­u­a­tion when they are not a sus­pect."