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Thursday, August 14, 2025

Kamla welcomes CoP’s move to close Emailgate probe

by

Gail Alexander
2413 days ago
20190104
Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Wel­come to any clo­sure that comes on Email­gate.

That was Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bissesssr’s view yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Thurs­day’s com­ment by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith on TV6 that he in­tends in com­ing weeks to close open mat­ters such as Email­gate and oth­er ‘Gates ‘ con­cern­ing for­mer Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. That in­clud­ed “Gan­ja­gate” and “Pris­ongate”.

Grif­fith’s com­ments were made to TV6 host Fazeer Mo­hammed.

Yes­ter­day, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said, “If it comes to that, we’d wel­come clo­sure on Email­gate on what was ob­vi­ous­ly a fake mat­ter. It’s been too long in com­ing. We’ve re­it­er­at­ed many times it was com­plete­ly false and have re­peat­ed­ly called for the out­come.”

Email­gate arose in 2013 with al­leged emails pro­duced by then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley (now Prime Min­is­ter) claim­ing a con­spir­a­cy by lead­ing PP Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials re­gard­ing the Sec­tion 34 leg­is­la­tion is­sue. Grif­fith was in the PP Gov­ern­ment then. PP of­fi­cials al­lowed scruti­ny of their com­put­ers and phones. The mat­ter was sub­ject of po­lice probes lo­cal­ly and with for­eign email ser­vice providers. Then Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams in 2013 said the emails were fake. In 2015, Williams said po­lice weren’t be­ing pushed in­to re­veal­ing the out­come. In March 2016 it was re­port­ed to po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors sub­mit­ted their re­port, find­ing “no crim­i­nal con­duct.”

“Gan­ja­gate” in­volved al­leged 2013 dis­cov­ery of mar­i­jua­na in the gaze­bo on the Palmiste prop­er­ty of Per­sad- Bisses­sar when she was then PM. For­mer PP Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er al­leged that on April 12, 2013, then deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Mervyn Richard­son in­formed him a pack­et con­tain­ing four ounces of mar­i­jua­na was found out­side a win­dow of Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s home.

Warn­er, who was na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter then, claimed he, Richard­son, then Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er Grif­fith (now Com­mis­sion­er) and (then) hous­ing min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal con­spired to cov­er it up.

Po­lice probe of that— plus Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty in­ves­ti­ga­tions— was launched in 2015 when po­lice con­firmed a “plant-like ma­te­r­i­al” was found on the prop­er­ty but gave a dif­fer­ent date and lo­ca­tion from Warn­er’s ac­count.

“Pris­ongate” arose from 2013 con­cerns by for­mer So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al Eleanor Don­alds0n-Hon­ey­well who wrote Per­sad- Bisses­sar seek­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion of al­leged col­lu­sion in­volv­ing at­tor­neys in prison lit­i­ga­tion cas­es against the State. She cit­ed con­cerns about breach of pro­fes­sion­al ethics for in­di­rect/di­rect fi­nan­cial gain and un­eth­i­cal busi­ness ven­tures.

UNC deputy leader David Lee al­so said yes­ter­day,” We’ve not­ed the com­mis­sion­er’s state­ments on clos­ing Email­gate and oth­er long­stand­ing mat­ter, we hope the ‘Gates will be closed prop­er­ly and in the in­ter­est of the law. But we hope he will take le­gal ac­tion against peo­ple who per­pe­trat­ed Email­gate since those ‘emails’ were found to be false and fake,”

Per­sad- Bisses­sar al­so dis­missed as false, an email sent to the me­dia yes­ter­day, al­leged­ly from the ad­dress of a UNC ac­tivist. This pur­port­ed to leak a doc­u­ment from her with a list of names of gen­er­al elec­tion “can­di­dates”.

Per­sad- Bisses­sar said, “There’s no such list. I’ve in­di­cat­ed when our Na­tion­al As­sem­bly meets lat­er this month then we’ll open nom­i­na­tions. It’s on­ly af­ter screen­ing any can­di­dates can arise, “

She said the per­son in whose name the false email orig­i­nat­ed called her yes­ter­day to say his ad­dress was used.

The list car­ried the name of OW­TU leader An­cel Ro­get to “be con­firmed” for Pointe a Pierre. Per­sad- Bisses­sar said Ro­get wasn’t even a UNC mem­ber. Sev­er­al UNC of­fi­cials and mem­bers whose names were on the list al­so dis­tanced them­selves from it.

On Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar holds a cau­cus with all MPs and Sen­a­tors to plan for work ahead.


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