Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is dis­ap­point­ed at the clo­sure of the con­tro­ver­sial Email­gate mat­ter.

He made the com­ment at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net press brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann’s, in re­sponse to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith’s an­nounce­ment the day be­fore that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had closed Email­gate af­ter six years of in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, TTPS and Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Email­gate was the name giv­en to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­lat­ing to the 31 emails dis­closed by then Op­po­si­tion Leader Row­ley in the Par­lia­ment on May 2013. The doc­u­ments al­leged­ly showed an email thread be­tween then gov­ern­ment (UNC) min­is­ters Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Gary Grif­fith, Roodal Mooni­lal, Anand Ram­lo­gan and then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in a plot to un­der­mine the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), ju­di­cia­ry and me­dia.

In re­sponse to the news, Row­ley said the mat­ter came to an end based on a num­ber of is­sues which the Of­fice of the DPP had out­lined in a let­ter.

In the Ju­ly 5 let­ter, the DPP had stat­ed he was not sat­is­fied that a re­al­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion ex­ist­ed to any iden­ti­fi­able sus­pect con­cern­ing the of­fence of mis­con­duct in of­fice or for any oth­er of­fences against the law of T&T. He al­so not­ed that the fact that the re­quest for preser­va­tion of the rel­e­vant da­ta was sent ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine months af­ter the date in which the emails were ap­par­ent­ly gen­er­at­ed af­fect­ed the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion and that the au­then­tic­i­ty of the emails could nei­ther be con­firmed nor de­nied. The let­ter al­so point­ed out that an in­de­pen­dent dis­trict Court Judge in the US was sat­is­fied that the ev­i­dence had suf­fi­cient co­gency to re­sult in grant­i­ng of a war­rant to search the servers of the in­ter­net ser­vice providers Mi­crosoft Cor­po­ra­tion and Google Inc.

While the UNC has claimed vin­di­ca­tion fol­low­ing the out­come, Row­ley said yes­ter­day “there is no vin­di­ca­tion in that. No ex­on­er­a­tion in that.”

“It is too late now to try to find out any­thing about these emails be­cause we wait­ed too long, the pe­ri­od of nine months, to con­firm and cer­ti­fy,” Row­ley said, adding the fail­ure by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and some of her then min­is­ters to not sur­ren­der their elec­tron­ic de­vices to the TTPS Cy­ber­crime Unit was an­oth­er ground for bring­ing the mat­ter to an end.

Row­ley said it all boiled down to the UNC not “co­op­er­at­ing with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Asked if he was dis­ap­point­ed by the turn of events, the PM said: “I am dis­ap­point­ed that we were not able to move with dis­patch, so we would not end up in a sit­u­a­tion be­ing told that you have come too late and there­fore what might have been there and what has been erased could have been dis­cov­ered. That is my dis­ap­point­ment.”

How­ev­er, Row­ley said he felt com­fort­able the in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­clud­ed “but could not go fur­ther. Things did hap­pen.”

The PM said when he be­gan pur­su­ing the mat­ter in 2013 by first go­ing to then pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards (now de­ceased) it was not a “wild goose chase. This was not a Mick­ey Mouse thing. What I am be­ing asked to do by the UNC is to leave it so. It suits them to leave it so. It doesn’t suit me and it didn’t suit the pop­u­la­tion.”

Row­ley said the UNC “got away” be­cause they were not charged.

“It doesn’t mean that noth­ing hap­pened. This is not the first time this hap­pened in the coun­try. We will not al­low the con­clu­sion to be spun by the UNC as though they are so hurt that this out­rage took place.”

He said the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion would have been an ap­pro­pri­ate place to have this in­ves­ti­gat­ed since they had “a lit­tle more clout than the po­lice.”

Al­though Per­sad-Bisses­sar hint­ed at tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against Row­ley, the PM shot back say­ing “there is no ac­tion more heinous that she could take against me than she has al­ready done.”

He said the UNC has been a “klep­to­crat­ic ca­bal” that ex­ist­ed dur­ing their tenure, which the PNM will pur­sue in court to fight cor­rup­tion.

Row­ley al­so rub­bished Per­sad-Biss­esar’s claim that the PNM was mov­ing to bring trumped-up charges against mem­bers of her par­ty. This, he said, was a move of “pure mis­chief and po­lit­i­cal spin to come and talk about trumped-up charges for elec­tion.” He said they can­not move fur­ther un­less some­one comes for­ward with ev­i­dence.