Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James wants to know whether some­body was try­ing to "set up" Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley by giv­ing him a se­ries of e-mails er­ro­neous­ly im­pli­cat­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in a con­spir­a­cy plot.James was speak­ing a day af­ter Google's cus­to­di­an of records Chi Nguyen re­port­ed­ly cleared Ram­lo­gan and his col­leagues of wrong­do­ing, say­ing the con­tro­ver­sial e-mails nev­er came from their e-mail ac­counts.

"If we be­lieve in the in­tegri­ty of the Google spokesper­son, then it is clear the mat­ter is now re­solved and these things seem to be fab­ri­ca­tions."If the Google rep­re­sen­ta­tive is trust­wor­thy, it means that the mat­ter has re­solved it­self and what the Op­po­si­tion leader brought to Par­lia­ment was a bunch of fab­ri­ca­tion," James said yes­ter­day.Say­ing that Row­ley must now clear the air on the au­then­tic­i­ty of the e-mails, James said it was high­ly doubt­ful that the po­lice would be able to find the per­son(s) who fab­ri­cat­ed the e-mails.

"In pol­i­tics you tend to keep the iden­ti­ty of an in­former a se­cret. Was some­body set­ting up the Op­po­si­tion Leader? Since he is the one who brought it up and the con­tent of those ex­changes can­not be found on Google's servers, then there is a need for him to make a state­ment on the fact that the in­for­ma­tion giv­en to him turned out to be false," James said."I don't think that po­lice can un­earth any­thing more," James said, not­ing it would be dif­fi­cult to prove who fab­ri­cat­ed the e-mails.

At­tempts to reach Row­ley, who is in Eng­land, were un­suc­cess­ful on Mon­day as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered. How­ev­er, in an ear­li­er state­ment, Row­ley said when the is­sue was raised in Par­lia­ment there was a call for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which both the po­lice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion sub­se­quent­ly launched.

In a state­ment to Ram­lo­gan, which was di­vulged to the me­dia on Sun­day, Nguyen said: "Google cer­ti­fies that it has lo­cat­ed no e-mails sent to and from the Google apps to ac­count anand@tstt.net.tt to or from kam­lapb1@gmail.com."Ram­lo­gan's US-based coun­sel Chris Sargeant al­so said on Sun­day that ac­tion was filed in the same Cal­i­for­nia-based courts to block the cur­rent In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's le­gal ac­tion against Google, as it would be a du­pli­ca­tion of ef­forts that would yield the same in­for­ma­tion that is al­ready in hand.

IC probe must con­tin­ue

Chair­man of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty Jack Warn­er said yes­ter­day he was con­cerned that Ram­lo­gan had blocked the com­mis­sion from do­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.Say­ing he would not be­lieve the Google state­ment un­til he got a sec­ond opin­ion, Warn­er said: "I find it strange how the AG in­ves­ti­gat­ed the AG and the AG val­i­dat­ed the AG. I would much pre­fer the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to car­ry on with its en­quiry."

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view Ram­lo­gan de­nied that he ever at­tempt­ed to block any en­quiry, say­ing he wel­comed any fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter by the po­lice and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion."There is no at­tempt to block any in­ves­ti­ga­tion. I find that lu­di­crous. At no time did I block any in­ves­ti­ga­tion, at no time did I make any such state­ment and I wel­come any fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, the Po­lice Ser­vice, the Of­fice of the DPP and any­one else be­cause I wel­come the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vin­di­cate my­self in this mat­ter.

"I al­so want to warn that those in­ves­ti­ga­tions must now cen­tre on who was be­hind this po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy," Ram­lo­gan said.