Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley does not see any sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the mat­ter brought up by MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and the long­stand­ing email­gate is­sue.

Dur­ing his Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion on Tues­day night, Mooni­lal read in­to the Hansard the de­tails of an email which pur­port­ed­ly linked a fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion be­tween A&V Drilling and the Prime Min­is­ter.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­nied this al­le­ga­tion at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day and in­struct­ed his lead lawyer, Michael Quam­i­na, to take ac­tion against Mooni­lal and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als who have since made state­ments in re­la­tion to the mat­ter out­side the House. (See pages A4 & A5)

But al­though Row­ley’s le­gal ac­tion against the Oropouche East MP is un­prece­dent­ed, this is not the first time that the print­ed page of an email con­tain­ing damn­ing in­for­ma­tion in­volv­ing a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter was brought be­fore Par­lia­ment.

Back in 2013, when in op­po­si­tion, it was Row­ley who brought a se­ries of print­ed emails to Par­lia­ment and un­der the cov­er of priv­i­lege, read out the de­tails of 31 email ex­changes pur­port­ed­ly be­tween the then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor Gary Grif­fith and gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan. In those emails read in­to Hansard, Row­ley de­tailed a plot to harm a jour­nal­ist and pay­ment of mon­ey to buy free­dom for an un­named per­son.

Back then, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred the mat­ter to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Ram­lo­gan had then said that the email pur­port­ed to be his did not ex­ist.

Re­mind­ed of this yes­ter­day, Row­ley dis­missed any sug­ges­tion that both mat­ters bear a re­sem­blance.

“Sim­i­lar­i­ties? What sim­i­lar­i­ty do you see here, ex­cept that it hap­pened in the Par­lia­ment?” Row­ley said in a text ex­change.

He said he saw sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences.

“1. I re­ceived doc­u­ments ANONY­MOUS­LY.

2. I re­viewed their con­tents and giv­en the sen­si­tive na­ture I sought an au­di­ence with His Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent and asked that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion IN­VES­TI­GATE the mat­ters.

3. Pres­i­dent Maxwell Richards passed the emails to the I.C. TO BE IN­VES­TI­GAT­ED.

4. Af­ter six (6) months and no in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­menced I, un­der my du­ty as an MP, in­formed the pub­lic of this state of af­fairs by fil­ing, in the Par­lia­ment, a SUB­STAN­TIVE MO­TION, for de­bate call­ing for a Po­lice IN­VES­TI­GA­TION!!”

Row­ley added, “In the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, Mooni­lal does not file a mo­tion. He is not ask­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He claims that he HAS DONE THE in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Row­ley said Mooni­lal claims his “so­journ to Mi­a­mi re­vealed a bank with doc­u­ments in­volv­ing me.”

“This means he is the own­er of what he said and on­ly he has such doc­u­ments and on­ly he pieced the two doc­u­ments to al­low him to ce­ment his al­le­ga­tions,” Row­ley said.

“He is so sat­is­fied that he is in pos­ses­sion of doc­u­ments that show that there is ev­i­dence of my in­volve­ment that he has come out­side the Par­lia­ment to con­tin­ue his li­bel and slan­der which hith­er­to he prop­a­gat­ed un­der Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.”

In 2015, two years in­to the in­ves­ti­ga­tions, in­ves­ti­ga­tors ques­tioned the six-month de­lay that Row­ley held back the doc­u­ments from the pub­lic do­main. In 2017, af­ter years of in­ves­ti­ga­tions, it was re­vealed on a crime pro­gramme that the po­lice probe in­to the email­gate mat­ter had found” noth­ing of sub­stance”. Per­sad-Bisses­sar had called for Row­ley to re­sign af­ter that an­nounce­ment.

Email­gate case

The Email­gate al­le­ga­tions were first made pub­lic by Dr Kei­th Row­ley on May 20, 2013, when he read in Par­lia­ment a thread of 31 email mes­sages pur­port­ing to be a con­ver­sa­tion be­tween four peo­ple, whose email ac­counts bore strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to those of the then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Biss­es­sar, then at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vi­sor Gary Grif­fith and then gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan.

The con­ver­sa­tion fo­cused on the pub­li­ca­tion of a sto­ry in the T&T Guardian news­pa­per about the pro­cla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fence) Amend­ment Act on Au­gust 31, 2012; a con­spir­a­cy to mur­der in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter Denyse Renne, who had been pur­su­ing the sto­ry, and the re­moval of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Roger Gas­pard, SC, from of­fice, among oth­er il­le­gal and ne­far­i­ous acts.

The pro­cla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 sparked wide­spread out­rage and a spon­ta­neous pub­lic de­mon­stra­tion, as it was viewed as spe­cial­ly craft­ed leg­is­la­tion to ben­e­fit Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fi­nanciers Ish­war Gal­barans­in­gh and Steve Fer­gu­son, who are charged with a se­ries of crim­i­nal of­fences re­lat­ing to the $1.6 bil­li­on Pi­ar­co Air­port De­vel­op­ment Project.

In the face of the out­cry, the then Per­sad-Biss­es­sar gov­ern­ment con­vened an emer­gency hear­ing of Par­lia­ment in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2013 and re­pealed the law.

For­mer High Court judge and then jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, who in­tro­duced Sec­tion 34 to the leg­is­la­tion, which in ef­fect pro­vid­ed an es­cape clause for peo­ple charged with se­ri­ous crimes, in­clud­ing fraud, to seek a dis­missal if their cas­es were not de­ter­mined with­in ten years, was fired.

Gal­barans­in­gh and Fer­gu­son re­main want­ed in the Unit­ed States for fraud of­fences re­lat­ing to the same project but a High Court judge ruled that the prop­er fo­rum for them to face tri­al was in T&T. The State nev­er chal­lenged the High Court rul­ing.

The Privy Coun­cil last month re­served its de­ci­sion on a chal­lenge filed by two of the Pi­ar­co de­fen­dants which chal­lenged the re­peal of Sec­tion 34 as un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

In May 2015, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion closed its par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter, say­ing there were “in­suf­fi­cient grounds” to pur­sue the probe. That state­ment trig­gered the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of deputy chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, a re­tired High Court judge and fel­low com­mis­sion­er Shelly-Anne Lalchan.

Ven­tour went on to crit­i­cise the com­mis­sion’s chair­man Zain­ool Ho­sein, a re­tired Ap­peal Court judge, say­ing the state­ment is­sued by the body was in­cor­rect. He said the Email­gate in­ves­ti­ga­tion and the in­for­ma­tion the com­mis­sion re­ceived in­volved just Per­sad-Biss­es­sar and Ram­lo­gan but said noth­ing about the oth­er in­di­vid­u­als (Grif­fith and Ram­bachan) al­so un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Glenn Hack­ett, who is over­see­ing the po­lice probe in­to the mat­ter, said yes­ter­day that the in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­ceived the in­for­ma­tion from Hot­mail in Sep­tem­ber and they were cur­rent­ly pe­rus­ing the vo­lu­mi­nous da­ta.