RICHARD LORD and DEREK ACHONG

Hours af­ter yes­ter­day's po­lice raid on the of­fices of News­day news­pa­per in Port-of-Spain at 11 am and re­porter An­dre Ba­goo's home, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards sus­pend­ed, with im­me­di­ate ef­fect, deputy chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Gladys Gafoor and ap­point­ed a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints against her.

Mem­bers of the tri­bunal are:

• Michael de la Bastide (for­mer Chief Jus­tice and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice), chair­man;

• Jus­tice Humphrey Stollmey­er;

• Jus­tice Mau­reen Ra­j­nath Lee; and

• Regi­nald Ar­mour SC, coun­sel to the tri­bunal.

De­tails of the ac­tion against Gafoor were con­tained in a re­lease from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The tri­bunal was "man­dat­ed with the ut­most ur­gency and all ap­pro­pri­ate dis­patch to re­port to and ad­vise His Ex­cel­len­cy on the facts found (and) whether such con­duct and/or be­hav­iour by Mrs Gladys Gafoor con­sti­tute con­duct and/or mis­be­hav­iour with­in the mean­ing of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act, Chap­ter 22:01 as amend­ed and in par­tic­u­lar Sec­tion 8 (2) (d) and (e) of Sec­tion 136 (7) of the Con­sti­tu­tion. These were the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in the un­re­solved dis­pute over a de­ci­sion by Gafoor not to re­cuse her­self from a mat­ter en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the com­mis­sion in­volv­ing for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie. That mat­ter is re­lat­ed to a land deal in­volv­ing for­mer chief mag­is­trate Sher­man Mc­Ni­chols. Yes­ter­day's re­lease, is­sued by the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, said Pres­i­dent Richards had ap­point­ed the tri­bunal "in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion en­abling him to do so, name­ly Sec­tion 136, to in­quire in­to com­plaints made by mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion against Gladys Gafoor, ap­point­ed mem­ber and deputy chair­man of the com­mis­sion."

It fur­ther stat­ed: "The com­plaints are that on March 15, 2010 and af­ter, through Jan­u­ary 2012 and con­tin­u­ing, Mrs Gafoor has en­gaged in cer­tain con­duct." The Pres­i­dent sus­pend­ed Gafoor "un­til fur­ther no­tice from per­form­ing the func­tions of the of­fice of mem­ber and deputy chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion with­out prej­u­dice to her en­ti­tle­ment to her salary and emol­u­ments of of­fice."

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, at around 11 am, a team of of­fi­cers went to the Cha­con Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fices of Dai­ly News Lim­it­ed, who pub­lish­es the news­pa­per, in an at­tempt to find doc­u­ments re­lat­ing to a sto­ry con­cern­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion. Po­lice sources said the desk of se­nior po­lit­i­cal re­porter An­dre Ba­goo, who wrote the ar­ti­cle, was searched for sev­er­al hours with the of­fi­cers seiz­ing the his com­put­er's hard-dri­ve. Ba­goo was ques­tioned by the of­fi­cers sev­er­al weeks ago con­cern­ing the source of the in­for­ma­tion re­vealed in the ex­clu­sive re­port, sources said. The of­fi­cers then head­ed to Ba­goo's home, Bel­mont, where lap­top com­put­ers al­leged­ly were seized in con­nec­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's raid, which last­ed al­most three hours, sev­er­al se­nior staff al­so were ques­tioned by de­tec­tives in con­nec­tion with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion which con­cerns pos­si­ble breach­es of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man and Ed­i­tor-in-Chief of Dai­ly News Ltd, pub­lish­ers of News­day, Therese Mills, in a state­ment said her com­pa­ny "con­demned in the strongest pos­si­ble lan­guage" yes­ter­day's raid by of­fi­cers of the An­ti- Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tions Bu­reau (ACID). She said af­ter the two-hour ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers, led by Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Solomon Koon Koon, "left our news­room tak­ing with them two flash dri­ves, one News­day cell­phone, is­sued to Mr Ba­goo, his per­son­al cell­phone and News­day com­put­er hard-dri­ve on which Mr Ba­goo has stored con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to his du­ties."

She said af­ter the search at the news­pa­per's of­fice "Koon Koon and his gang left for Mr Ba­goo's res­i­dence in Bel­mont where he lives with his el­der­ly par­ents." Mills said af­ter search­ing Ba­goo's home they "took pos­ses­sion of his three per­son­al com­put­ers, two flash dri­ves and even ques­tioned the use of his sis­ter's per­son­al com­put­er."

Mills added: "The abuse of our rights by the po­lice fol­lows a let­ter, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 20, ad­dressed to Mr Ba­goo from Koon Koon re­quest­ing that Mr Ba­goo re­veal the source of the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in an ar­ti­cle which Mr Ba­goo had writ­ten, ti­tled "Bit­ter Row", pub­lished on De­cem­ber 20, 2011." Mills said the ar­ti­cle re­vealed dis­agree­ment among mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion over a re­quest by its chair­man Ken Gor­don for Gafoor and mem­ber Se­u­nar­ine Jokhoo to re­cuse them­selves from in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer at­tor­ney John Je­re­mie.

Mills said: "News­day stands by Mr Ba­goo's right to refuse to re­veal his sources un­der any cir­cum­stances. If this of­fends the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, un­der its present chair­man (or any oth­er chair­man), to the ex­tent where the po­lice raids are made on our news­room and on the house of our re­porter, so be it."

And Gor­don, in a brief com­ment last night on the sus­pen­sion of Gafoor and the ap­point­ment of a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate her con­duct, said: "I hope the mat­ter will be pur­sued ex­pe­di­tious­ly." Ques­tioned about the po­lice raid on News­day, For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan said he was not aware of the raid at the news­pa­per, hav­ing been in Cab­i­net. He added that the Gov­ern­ment re­mained com­mit­ted to press free­dom in T&T. "The Gov­ern­ment will al­ways stand on that plat­form, free­dom of the press and the right of the press to re­port in a fair and just man­ner." Mean­while, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T's vice pres­i­dent Judy Ray­mond said: "We are very con­cerned and out­raged at the way An­dre (Ba­goo) is be­ing treat­ed, like a crim­i­nal." She said the en­tire in­ci­dent "seemed heavy-hand­ed" as Ba­goo was not a mem­ber of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and was not among the peo­ple who filed de­c­la­ra­tions to the com­mis­sion. Ray­mond said the con­tents of Ba­goo's sto­ry was not con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion. She in­sist­ed the sto­ry did not con­tain per­son­al fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion and didn't com­pro­mise any­one's safe­ty. She added the con­fis­ca­tion of Ba­goo's com­put­er was an "ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous and wor­ry­ing prece­dent." A po­lice source said last night Po­lice Cy­ber Crime Unit would check Ba­goo's com­put­er hard dri­ves and cell­phones for cer­tain bits of in­for­ma­tion.