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Saturday, July 26, 2025

AG not blocking Integrity body

...sur­prised at its ques­tions to Google

by

20140825

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan says he wel­comes the con­tin­ued in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to E-mail­gate by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.He made the com­ment yes­ter­day as he said he was not seek­ing to "block" any con­tin­ued probe in­to the mat­ter or the cor­re­spon­dence ex­changed be­tween him­self and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and their oth­er Gov­ern­ment col­leagues dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der ques­tion.

He al­so said it was Google Inc which had cleared him of any con­nec­tion to the thread of e-mails that trig­gered the E-mail­gate fi­as­co.Ram­lo­gan said while his lawyers did serve no­tice on the Cal­i­for­nia-based com­pa­ny, it was mere­ly a le­gal for­mal­i­ty to in­form the oth­er par­ties that the in­for­ma­tion the com­mis­sion was legal­ly seek­ing from Google was al­ready of­fi­cial­ly de­liv­ered.

"I don't think it blocks their ap­pli­ca­tion and I hope it doesn't be­cause I am very con­cerned to en­sure that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion pro­ceeds with its in­ves­ti­ga­tion so we can have that in­de­pen­dent clear­ance by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, by the Po­lice Ser­vice, in the same way that we have had the in­de­pen­dent clear­ance by Google."The ob­jec­tive, in shar­ing with the court that is deal­ing with the ap­pli­ca­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, is some­thing that is man­dat­ed by law.

"In the state of Cal­i­for­nia, if there is a re­lat­ed pro­ceed­ing be­tween two par­ties, it must be brought to the at­ten­tion of an­oth­er court. "That al­so in­ci­den­tal­ly al­so hap­pens to be the law in T&T and most Com­mon­wealth na­tions," he said.But the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion ap­pli­ca­tion is dif­fer­ent as it cen­ters its in­ves­ti­ga­tions on the e-mail ad­dress anand@gmail.com and not anand@tstt.net.tt.

To that, the AG said: "I can­not give per­mis­sion to search an ac­count that does not be­long to me...that e-mail ad­dress (anand@gmail.com) fea­tured nowhere in the doc­u­ment. I was quite sur­prised to see the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion would spec­u­late and ask for an e-mail ad­dress that was not con­tained in the doc­u­ment."If it is not in the doc­u­ment I would not have been able to ask Google to search it. You can on­ly ask Google to search what is on that doc­u­ment," he said.

Ram­lo­gan said the ma­jor­i­ty of e-mails on the thread car­ried the mis­spelled e-mail ad­dress, anan@gmail.com."I don't think it was a spelling er­ror and I am very sur­prised that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion would in­vite the court to spec­u­late like that with­out be­ing fair to us," he said.He said he had no prob­lem with any­body con­tin­u­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the anand@gmail.com e-mail ad­dress."It is bo­gus, it is a hoax and it is part of a po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy that was de­signed to bring down the Gov­ern­ment by at­tack­ing its cred­i­bil­i­ty," he said.

...Anand got com­ple­tee-mail trail months ago

More than four months ago, e-mail ser­vice provider Google pro­vid­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan with a com­plete record of his e-mail trans­ac­tions with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the month of Sep­tem­ber 2012.The record was com­pressed in­to an mbox file, which is a cut and paste of the con­ver­sa­tions, with any ac­com­pa­ny­ing at­tach­ments.Ram­lo­gan said last night that an ex­am­i­na­tion of that file would show that "none of the fake e-mails are among those" dis­closed.

Ref­er­ence to the mbox file was made in a sworn af­fi­davit by Google's cus­to­di­an of records Chi Nguyen, which was time-stamped Au­gust 22. Nguyen stat­ed that the records were dis­closed to Ram­lo­gan on May 7.In his lat­est court ac­tion, which was filed on Sun­day, Ram­lo­gan claims that his sub­poe­na to Google "was more de­tailed" than the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's which was grant­ed by a fed­er­al judge in Cal­i­for­nia on Au­gust 14.

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is seek­ing in­for­ma­tion from the fol­low­ing ac­counts - anand@tstt.net.tt; anand@gmail.com and kam­lapb1@gmail.com - for the month of Sep­tem­ber 2012, which are "rel­e­vant to a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to pos­si­ble gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion."Google has un­til Au­gust 28 to com­ply or chal­lenge the court or­der. Ram­lo­gan said both he and Per­sad-Bisses­sar have al­ready writ­ten to the com­mis­sion au­tho­ris­ing it to ac­cess their records.

In his lat­est le­gal ac­tion, Ram­lo­gan notes that Google, as well as Per­sad-Bisses­sar and him­self, had the right to ob­ject to, seek pro­tec­tive or­ders or ap­peal, un­der the ap­plic­a­ble law, for pro­tec­tion against their pri­va­cy and le­gal priv­i­lege.The le­gal doc­u­ment states that in light of the dis­clo­sure made by Google to Ram­lo­gan "that fur­ther dis­cov­ery re­lat­ed the forg­eries un­der­pin­ning this dis­cov­ery is not nec­es­sary."

To sup­port his po­si­tion, Ram­lo­gan con­tends that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's in­ves­ti­ga­tion "may lead to charges" against the Prime Min­is­ter and him­self in T&T, "giv­ing them a sub­stan­tial in­ter­est" in the pro­ceed­ings be­tween the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and Google.

Both Ram­lo­gan and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as pri­vate cit­i­zens and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, have al­so not­ed that the e-mails ex­changed be­tween them al­so in­clude com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their at­tor­neys in the pend­ing In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion law­suit and that they had "spe­cif­ic in­ter­ests in pre­serv­ing any le­gal priv­i­leges, in­clud­ing over those at­tor­ney/client and of­fi­cial state com­mu­ni­ca­tions."

They fur­ther re­served all rights to as­sert any ap­plic­a­ble le­gal priv­i­lege or ap­pro­pri­ate pro­tec­tive or­der nec­es­sary to en­sure that T&T's state com­mu­ni­ca­tion and per­son­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions which are re­spon­sive to the sub­poe­na are not in­ad­ver­tent­ly en­tered in­to the pub­lic record."

E-mail­gate Back­ground

On May 20 last year while ad­dress­ing Par­lia­ment in his no con­fi­dence mo­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley read 31 con­tro­ver­sial e-mails al­leged­ly sent be­tween se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

The of­fi­cials whose e-mail ad­dress­es the mes­sages were pur­port­ed to have come from were Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, for­mer Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the Prime Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith.

The al­le­ga­tions dealt with an al­leged plot to tap the phone of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the in­tim­i­da­tion of the T&T Guardian jour­nal­ist who broke the sto­ry about the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011. The of­fi­cials who were named all de­nied the al­le­ga­tions and claimed the e-mails were fab­ri­ca­tions.

AG: Row­ley will­pay me back

Ram­lo­gan seemed con­fi­dent yes­ter­day he would be vic­to­ri­ous in the planned le­gal ac­tion against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and has al­ready draft­ed the le­gal ac­tion let­ter."I have al­so start­ed look­ing at the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act to see if Dr Row­ley had some du­ty to run this doc­u­ment by an IT ex­pert be­fore he dropped this bomb­shell in Par­lia­ment," he said.Ram­lo­gan said he paid top dol­lar for his le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in this mat­ter and planned to re­cov­er mon­ey spent from Row­ley.

"So it's been paid for by per­son­al funds and I spared no ex­pense be­cause I know that I will be get­ting re­im­burse­ment from Dr Row­ley," he said.While he re­fused to spec­u­late on the amount, he did say it would be up­wards of one mil­lion dol­lars.The T&T Guardian texted Row­ley, who is cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try, ask­ing if he was con­cerned about Ram­lo­gan's plans to sue for defama­tion."The on­ly thing that con­cerns me is that he is still the coun­try's At­tor­ney Gen­er­al," Row­ley said.


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