An­na-Lisa Paul

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mervyn Richard­son and his team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors have sought ad­vice from the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and se­nior coun­sel re­gard­ing their e-mail in­ves­ti­ga­tion.The T&T Guardian learnt the meet­ing took place yes­ter­day morn­ing, and fol­lowed in­ter­views with sev­er­al peo­ple named in the con­tro­ver­sy.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Richard­son re­fused to di­vulge any in­for­ma­tion about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, ex­cept to say, "The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is at a very cru­cial stage right now."

As­sur­ing that "all hands are on deck and are work­ing fever­ish­ly to com­plete this in­ves­ti­ga­tion," Richard­son said con­sid­er­a­tion was still be­ing giv­en to in­clud­ing for­eign in­ves­ti­ga­tors to as­sist lo­cal agents.Re­in­forc­ing ear­li­er state­ments that he would not run the probe in the pub­lic do­main, Richard­son re­fused to com­ment on the meet­ing with act­ing DPP Joan Hon­ore-Paul.Hon­ore-Paul will be as­sist­ing the po­lice in the mat­ter as DPP Roger Gas­pard has re­cused him­self be­cause he too was named in the 31 e-mails which Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed in the House weeks ago.

Dur­ing his de­bate on a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Row­ley gave some of the con­tents of 31 e-mails. The e-mails ad­dressed the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co, of­fer­ing the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions a judge­ship and the in­tim­i­da­tion of a jour­nal­ist who broke the sto­ry.The e-mails were pur­port­ed to be from ad­dress­es be­long­ing to the PM, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Works Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­er to the PM, Gary Grif­fith. Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her Gov­ern­ment has de­nied any knowl­edge of the e-mails, but the PM wrote to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, ask­ing that it be probed. Williams in turn man­dat­ed Richard­son to head the probe.

Richard­son said while sev­er­al in­ter­views had al­ready been done, there were sev­er­al more to be com­plet­ed,He re­fused to say who was yet to be in­ter­viewed, but said, "We are mov­ing along and are fo­cused on de­ter­min­ing the mat­ter."Calls to the cell phone of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan went unan­swered, whilst At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan was un­able to con­firm any meet­ing.