Dar­ren Ba­haw

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has been iden­ti­fied as a crit­i­cal wit­ness in the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice against At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, ac­cord­ing to re­li­able po­lice sources.

The in­for­ma­tion came as act­ing Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice in charge of Op­er­a­tions, Harold Phillip, be­gan his probe in­to the lat­est crim­i­nal al­le­ga­tion linked to the in­fa­mous Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Grif­fith would on­ly re­peat: "I have no com­ment to make on that mat­ter."

But sources said Grif­fith in­tend­ed to co-op­er­ate with po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors in the mat­ter.

West yes­ter­day sub­mit­ted a de­tailed signed wit­ness state­ment to the po­lice in sup­port of his com­plaint that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al tried to get him to with­draw a wit­ness state­ment he filed in de­fence of a defama­tion law­suit be­tween Ram­lo­gan and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­lat­ing to the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter.

This trig­gered act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams to ap­point Phillip to as­sem­ble a team to probe the al­le­ga­tion. West has al­so been pro­vid­ed with a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Sources said in­ves­ti­ga­tors will pore over a chain of events which will take them to the Hall of Jus­tice, Port-of-Spain, to ex­am­ine court records and through the tele­phone records of West, Ram­lo­gan and Grif­fith among oth­er peo­ple.

Sources said West last year had con­fid­ed to a politi­cian about at­tempts be­ing made to in­flu­ence him in a court mat­ter. The at­tempts were made on the same day the High Court gave a de­ci­sion in the defama­tion law­suit against Row­ley, po­lice sources said.

Ram­lo­gan, in a de­tailed press re­lease on Mon­day, de­nied West's al­le­ga­tions that he at­tempt­ed to in­flu­ence him to with­draw the wit­ness state­ment in ex­change for his ap­point­ment as di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

That po­si­tion, un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion, re­quires con­sent from both the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader be­fore it is sealed by the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.

Yes­ter­day, mem­bers of the me­dia gath­ered out­side the AG's of­fices, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, af­ter ru­mours spread he was about to re­sign and make a state­ment at a press con­fer­ence to that ef­fect.

The AG was vis­it­ed by Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath and at­tor­ney Wayne Sturge at one point but no press con­fer­ence ma­te­ri­alised and the AG sub­se­quent­ly sent out a re­lease in which he wel­comed the probe on the mat­ter.

Email­gate not go­ing away

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, AG Ram­lo­gan called for a speedy en­quiry and la­belled the al­le­ga­tion part of a "po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy."

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Ram­lo­gan, Grif­fith and Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan were iden­ti­fied in a sep­a­rate crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­lat­ing to the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter, now dubbed Email­gate.

It was Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who in May 2012 dis­closed in Par­lia­ment a thread of e-mails pur­port­ed­ly be­ing ex­changed be­tween the four politi­cians in the wake of the pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion which was tai­lored to ben­e­fit po­lit­i­cal fi­nanciers Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son, who were fac­ing a se­ries of fraud charges re­lat­ing to the $1.6 bil­lion Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project.

That mat­ter, sub­ject to two in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and the Po­lice Ser­vice, are yet to be com­plet­ed.

The probe by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has pro­gressed some­what with e-mail ser­vice provider Google to com­ply with a sub­poe­na in a Cal­i­for­nia, USA court to hand over the e-mail records of Ram­lo­gan and Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The po­lice mat­ter is now lodged with the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Jus­tice, the T&T Guardian learned.

The con­spir­a­cy de­tailed in the thread of e-mails dis­closed a plot to spy on Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, re­move him from of­fice by in­flu­enc­ing Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to ap­point Gas­pard to the High Court bench and harm in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Denyse Renne among oth­er things.

The four politi­cians have pre­vi­ous­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing in the Email­gate mat­ter and de­scribed the thread of e-mails as a fab­ri­ca­tion.