Derek Achong

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has filed yet an­oth­er defama­tion law­suit against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, this time for his role in the con­tro­ver­sial E-mail­gate scan­dal. It comes al­most three weeks af­ter Ram­lo­gan pro­duced cor­re­spon­dence from Google Inc which he said in­val­i­dat­ed a thread of in­crim­i­nat­ing e-mails pur­port­ed­ly sent be­tween him, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and oth­er se­nior gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, filed in the Port-of-Spain High Court yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, Ram­lo­gan is al­leg­ing that Row­ley com­mit­ted slan­der when he spoke ex­ten­sive­ly on the al­leged con­spir­a­cy at a pub­lic meet­ing in San Juan, days af­ter he re­vealed the e-mails in Par­lia­ment on May 20 last year.While Ram­lo­gan's lawyers ad­mit­ted that Row­ley could not be sued for his state­ment in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives as it fell un­der par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege, they said he had no pro­tec­tion for his sub­se­quent com­ments."The words com­plained of and the en­tire­ty of the Croisee speech made by the de­fen­dant have ex­posed the claimant to pub­lic scan­dal, ridicule and con­tempt and has caused his name, and of­fice to be brought in­to odi­um and dis­re­pute and fur­ther caused him hu­mil­i­a­tion, em­bar­rass­ment and dis­tress," the law­suit stat­ed.

In ad­di­tion to gen­er­al and ag­gra­vat­ed dam­ages from Row­ley for dam­age to his rep­u­ta­tion, Ram­lo­gan is al­so seek­ing more than $1.2 mil­lion in le­gal fees in de­fend­ing the "reck­less" al­le­ga­tion, in­clud­ing US$75,000 spent to sue Google to clar­i­fy the is­sue.The fee is still pend­ing, with Ram­lo­gan's le­gal team in the Unit­ed States still in­volved in a law­suit filed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion which is seek­ing sim­i­lar in­for­ma­tion in its probe of the is­sue.

Ram­lo­gan's lawyers crit­i­cised Row­ley's han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion as they ques­tioned his ad­mis­sion of a six-month de­lay be­tween re­ceiv­ing, send­ing them to the Pres­i­dent and even­tu­al­ly re­veal­ing them in Par­lia­ment."He could have, but did not, per­son­al­ly re­port­ed the mat­ter di­rect­ly to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and/or the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice so that the mat­ter could have been prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed," the court doc­u­ments said.They al­so ac­cused Row­ley of us­ing the e-mails to ex­ploit a po­lit­i­cal op­por­tu­ni­ty and of be­ing "dri­ven by pure­ly self­ish po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tion."The de­fen­dant was reck­less in mak­ing these false state­ments as he had am­ple time to ver­i­fy the au­then­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ment con­tain­ing the al­leged e-mails which he claims was anony­mous­ly de­posit­ed in his mail box," Ram­lo­gan's lawyers said.

In his doc­u­ments to sup­port his claim of the bo­gus na­ture of the e-mail thread, Ram­lo­gan ref­ered to an af­fi­davit from Google's cus­to­di­an of records Chi Nguyen sent to him on the com­ple­tion of his law­suit in a Cal­i­for­nia court on Au­gust 22.Ram­lo­gan was care­ful to note that his re­quest was not lim­it­ed to the head­er in­for­ma­tion on the e-mail, which were al­ready ruled ques­tion­able by two lo­cal in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ex­perts hired by him."Google al­so searched the con­tents of the claimant's e-mail ac­count to de­ter­mine whether the al­leged e-mails were sent or re­ceived by him or the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter."Every sin­gle e-mail that was sent by the claimant to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter and vice-ver­sa for the rel­e­vant pe­ri­od was in fact pro­duced by Google to elim­i­nate any doubt," the law­suit stat­ed.Ram­lo­gan is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Se­nior Coun­sel Pamela El­der and at­tor­neys Kelvin Ramkissoon, Ger­ald Ramdeen and Richard Ja­gai.

Ram­lo­gan Speaks:Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ram­lo­gan said he de­cid­ed to file the law­suit to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the Gov­ern­ment. He said since as­sum­ing of­fice in 2010 he was re­peat­ed­ly hit with base­less at­tacks from Row­ley.Ram­lo­gan said the law­suit was one of sev­er­al he had filed against Row­ley, in­clud­ing for ac­cu­sa­tions made against him in the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co, per­tain­ing to the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) and for al­le­ga­tions that he award­ed State briefs to his for­mer law cham­bers.

While he ad­mit­ted that all the cas­es are still pend­ing in court, Ram­lo­gan said: "It is in­ter­est­ing that he has been in de­fault of sev­er­al court di­rec­tions and or­ders where­by he has failed to pro­duce any ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate his out­ra­geous ac­cu­sa­tions."Stat­ing the PNM was in a "cred­i­bil­i­ty cri­sis", Ram­lo­gan warned cit­i­zens to be cau­tious with that par­ty's crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment."He is pre­pared to sac­ri­fice the truth on the al­ter of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy when it suits him," Ram­lo­gan said.

His­to­ry of E-mail­gate:Dur­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on May 20, last year, Row­ley pro­duced the list of 31 e-mails al­leged­ly sent be­tween Prime Min­is­ter, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter as he ac­cused them of "high crime" and "mis­be­hav­iour of pub­lic of­fice".The con­spir­a­cy in­volved harm­ing a T&T Guardian jour­nal­ist who had bro­ken the Sec­tion 34 sto­ry, spy­ing on the DPP's of­fice, lean­ing on Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie to ap­point DPP Roger Gas­pard as a judge and a plot to cov­er up the en­tire af­fair.

Row­ley read out the e-mails in Par­lia­ment af­ter wait­ing on then pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to act on the same in­for­ma­tion for some six months, hav­ing for­ward­ed it to him in 2012.The par­ties im­pli­cat­ed in the plot all de­nied any wrong­do­ing with the PM, ask­ing act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams to launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dent, the re­sult of which is still pend­ing.In an ef­fort to clear his name Ram­lo­gan filed the law­suit against Google ear­li­er this year, with the in­ter­net gi­ant ac­ced­ing to the re­quest last month.The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing with their law­suit still pend­ing be­fore the US court. Ram­lo­gan has in­ter­vened in the law­suit us­ing his Google re­sponse which he said negat­ed the need for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.