A lawyer for At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan has writ­ten to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion (IC) and the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions urg­ing the two bod­ies to act de­ci­sive­ly on new in­for­ma­tion from in­ter­net e-mail ser­vice provider Google Inc which could help them ar­rive at a "firm and cor­rect" po­si­tion in the now in­fa­mous E-mail­gate probe.Over the past two days, the let­ters, along with a sworn af­fi­davit from Google's cus­to­di­an of records Chi Nguyen and three oth­er le­gal doc­u­ments, were dis­patched to the bod­ies.

The first dis­patch went to the Reg­is­trar of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Mar­tin Far­rell in the hope it would as­sist the com­mis­sion in its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions of a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy first raised in Par­lia­ment in May 2013 by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.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."I trust that the at­tached doc­u­ments which are self-ex­plana­to­ry would not on­ly as­sist the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in ar­riv­ing at a firm and cor­rect po­si­tion as to the na­ture of the doc­u­ments which form the ba­sis of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion but would al­so pro­vide en­light­en­ment and guid­ance as to the way for­ward," at­tor­ney Pamela El­der, SC, stat­ed in her let­ter to the IC.

El­der stat­ed that it was with "im­mense plea­sure" that she was send­ing the doc­u­ments to the com­mis­sion for its "deep­est con­sid­er­a­tion".In the let­ter, she not­ed that Ram­lo­gan had for­ward­ed writ­ten con­sent to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Jan­u­ary 31, au­tho­ris­ing Google to search his e-mail ac­count car­ry­ing the e-mail ad­dress anand@tstt.net.tt, for any e-mails ex­changed be­tween him­self and the fol­low­ing ac­counts, kam­lapb1@gmail.com, cap­tain­gary­grif­fith@hot­mail.com and su­ru­jram­bachan@gmail.com.

The e-mail ac­counts iden­ti­fied by Ram­lo­gan be­long to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan and him­self.El­der said that sev­en months had elapsed with­out any re­sponse from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.

On Au­gust 14, the com­mis­sion was grant­ed a sub­poe­na from a fed­er­al judge in Cal­i­for­nia, Unit­ed States, to de­mand the records for the fol­low­ing e-mail ac­counts, anand@gmail.com, anand@tstt.net.tt and kam­lapb1@gmail.com from Google. The dead­line for Google to ob­ject to the court or­der ex­pires to­day.

Right to de­fend pri­va­cy

The le­gal doc­u­ments Pamela El­der SC sub­mit­ted in­clud­ed two con­sent or­ders ob­tained by Ram­lo­gan in his defama­tion law­suit in Cal­i­for­nia, which au­tho­rised Google to search his e-mail ac­count anand@tstt.net.tt for any e-mail sent or re­ceived by kam­lapb1@gmail.com for the month of Sep­tem­ber 2012 and to hand over the con­tents to his lawyers.

The court or­ders not­ed that it "re­solves any re­quest, le­gal process, mo­tions, or court or­ders cur­rent­ly di­rect­ed to or against Google in this mat­ter and any such re­quest, le­gal process, mo­tions, or court or­ders are here­by moot."

The third doc­u­ment, which was filed on Au­gust 24 in the mat­ter con­cern­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion law­suit against Google, sug­gest­ed that the in­for­ma­tion dis­closed by the Google's cus­to­di­an of records re­solved that law­suit and there was no need for Google to search the e-mail ac­counts of Ram­lo­gan and Per­sad-Bisses­sar again.

It not­ed that both Ram­lo­gan and Per­sad-Bisses­sar had the right to ob­ject or seek pro­tec­tive or­ders if Google in­tends to com­ply with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's sub­poe­na, in­clud­ing chal­leng­ing it on the ba­sis that it was breach­ing their rights to pri­va­cy and le­gal priv­i­leges.They both con­tend that the e-mails re­ferred to by Row­ley were "fab­ri­cat­ed and con­coct­ed by per­sons un­known for ul­te­ri­or po­lit­i­cal mo­tives, to as­sas­si­nate their char­ac­ters and se­cure a po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage."

In that doc­u­ment, it was stat­ed that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's in­ves­ti­ga­tion "may lead to charges" against Ram­lo­gan and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, giv­ing them "a sub­stan­tial in­ter­est" in the re­lat­ed pro­ceed­ings.Sim­i­lar doc­u­ments were al­so dis­patched to deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Joan Hon­ore-Paul and Row­ley yes­ter­day. Gas­pard del­e­gat­ed Hon­ore-Paul to ad­vise the po­lice in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion as his name was men­tioned in Row­ley's e-mails.

In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Ken Gor­don al­so re­cused him­self from the mat­ter due to is­sues raised by Ram­lo­gan and the PM over a meet­ing he held with Row­ley ahead of go­ing to the Par­lia­ment with the e-mails.El­der in­tends to write to act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams to­day sup­ply­ing the same doc­u­ments and call­ing for an ur­gent crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to de­ter­mine the au­thor of the e-mails dis­closed by Row­ley.

What Google dis­closed

Apart from the sworn af­fi­davit from the cus­to­di­an of records, Google has al­so pro­vid­ed Ram­lo­gan with 22 e-mails ex­changed be­tween him­self and PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the month of Sep­tem­ber 2012. Those e-mails were pro­vid­ed on May 7 but were on­ly cer­ti­fied by Nguyen as be­ing au­then­tic on Au­gust 22.

An ex­am­i­na­tion of those e-mails, which were pro­vid­ed to the T&T Guardian, does not cor­re­spond to any of the e-mails read by Op­po­si­tion Leader Row­ley in May 2013. Google's search ex­am­ined the e-mail ac­counts of anand@tstt.net.tt and kam­lapb1@gmail.com.

It al­so ex­am­ined six oth­er ac­counts – anan@gmail.com, anan@gmail.com;anand@tstt.net.tt, anan@gmail.com:anand@tstt,net.tt, anan@gmail.com@gmail.com, kam­lapb1@gmail.com gmail.com and kam­lapb1@gmail.com. – but was un­able to lo­cate records show­ing e-mails re­ceived from or sent to those ac­counts from anand@tstt.net.tt or kam­lapb1@gmail.com

It does, how­ev­er, re­fer to a se­ries of events af­ter Sec­tion 34, of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Amend­ment Act, was pro­claimed, in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States Em­bassy's ad­vanced no­tice of a press re­lease, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 11, 2012, ex­press­ing con­cerns about me­dia re­ports that the fraud case against Ish­war Gal­barans­ingh and Steve Fer­gu­son may be dropped be­cause of the pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion.

There was al­so a draft of a let­ter, sent by Ram­lo­gan to the Prime Min­is­ter, ad­dressed to the then act­ing Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 21, 2012, ad­vis­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of then Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney's po­si­tion as a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter and the re­as­sign­ment of the port­fo­lio to Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Prakash Ra­mad­har.

Ram­lo­gan con­tends that the af­fi­davit from Google's cus­to­di­an of records and the e-mails found in his records was a com­plete an­swer to the al­le­ga­tions made in an e-mail thread read in Par­lia­ment by Row­ley.The doc­u­ments were first dis­closed at press con­fer­ence by Ram­lo­gan on Sun­day in the pres­ence of El­der and his US at­tor­ney Chris Sar­gent, who par­tic­i­pat­ed at the press con­fer­ence via Skype.

Ram­lo­gan said then that his US lawyers in­tend­ed to present the af­fi­davit and records from his e-mail ac­count to the judge hear­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion case against Google, in or­der to pre­vent any du­pli­ca­tion of a re­quest to search the e-mail ac­counts of both the Prime Min­is­ter and him­self.