Renu­ka Singh

Em­bat­tled chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion Zain­ool Ho­sein last night broke his si­lence over claims that the com­mis­sion is­sued an in­cor­rect state­ment an­nounc­ing the ter­mi­na­tion of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Email­gate mat­ter, say­ing he did "noth­ing wrong."

Ques­tioned about the strong and un­char­ac­ter­is­tic state­ments made by for­mer deputy chair­man Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, a for­mer High Court judge, af­ter his sud­den res­ig­na­tion on Thurs­day, Ho­sein, a re­tired Ap­peal Court judge and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Re­tired Judges As­so­ci­a­tion, said, "I can­not speak on the is­sue of the (for­mer) deputy chair­man, I am un­able to an­swer any ques­tions be­cause the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is not con­sti­tut­ed."

Ven­tour said on Thurs­day that the state­ment is­sued by the com­mis­sion to the Prime Min­is­ter's at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, on Tues­day, which stat­ed that there was "no or in­suf­fi­cient grounds" to con­tin­ue the probe, was mis­lead­ing to the pub­lic be­cause it was in­cor­rect. He added that up to the time just pri­or to his res­ig­na­tion, the com­mis­sion had not yet re­ceived all the in­for­ma­tion it sought from email ser­vice providers.

Ven­tour said he had walked out of a meet­ing called by Ho­sein to dis­cuss the mat­ter be­fore it end­ed, how­ev­er, so he was un­cer­tain whether the oth­er com­mis­sion­ers had agreed to the re­lease of the state­ment.

On Wednes­day, an­oth­er mem­ber of the com­mis­sion, Dr Shelly Anne Lalchan, al­so re­signed cit­ing per­son­al rea­sons.

The Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the two res­ig­na­tions. How­ev­er, the state­ment did not ad­dress the con­cerns raised among var­i­ous sec­tors of the pub­lic yes­ter­day about Ven­tour's claims.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Ho­sein ad­mit­ted that the com­mis­sion was no longer func­tion­al be­cause of Ven­tour's de­par­ture. He said ac­cord­ing to the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act there must be five sit­ting com­mis­sion mem­bers, one of whom must be a deputy chair.

"In­ci­den­tal­ly, there is no longer an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion," Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein said the word "col­lapse" had been bandied about al­ready, but the fact was that with two of the five mem­bers gone, there was no com­mis­sion un­til they were re­placed.

Mem­bers of the me­dia tracked Ho­sein for most of yes­ter­day, which Ho­sein and his fam­i­ly strong­ly ob­ject­ed to.

"I feel like I was in some lynch mob. This is not right," Ho­sein said.

He said be­cause he was ap­proached at his mosque by jour­nal­ists yes­ter­day, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty had be­come up­set by re­porters' ac­tions.

"I am go­ing to protest this. I am go­ing to re­port this to the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion (of T&T)," he said.

The prime min­is­ter's at­tor­ney Is­rael Khan, SC, yes­ter­day con­firmed that Ho­sein worked in his pri­vate law cham­bers.

He, how­ev­er, de­nied all claims that Ho­sein act­ed with any bias when he is­sued the state­ment clear­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

But he said he re­spect­ed Ven­tour's right to his opin­ion.

"My view is that he is en­ti­tled to his opin­ion," Khan said.

He said that while he did not know how the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion op­er­at­ed, it com­prised five mem­bers and there must have been a con­sen­sus be­fore the state­ment was is­sued.

"If there is a claim of bias, then the de­ci­sion could be tak­en be­fore the courts and nul­li­fied," Khan said.

He said, how­ev­er, that any spec­u­la­tion that he and Ho­sein act­ed in ca­hoots was "ridicu­lous."

"This is a small coun­try and every­one knows each oth­er or some­one that knows some­one. The man worked in this cham­ber but he is a man of im­pec­ca­ble in­tegri­ty and char­ac­ter," Khan said.

Khan said if there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence found against the Prime Min­is­ter, then even as her lawyer he would call for her to be "locked up."

"If there is no ev­i­dence found on two of the four per­sons be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed and all four of them were sup­posed to be talk­ing to each oth­er, then if no ev­i­dence is found on two, it stands that the con­ver­sa­tion did not take place," he said.

Ven­tour, Khan said, seemed to want the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to do the work of the po­lice.

He said it was now up to the in­ves­ti­ga­tors to find out who was be­hind the cre­ation of the thread of emails that Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley read out in Par­lia­ment on May 20, 2013, which formed the sub­stance of his no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The emails, which bore sim­i­lar email ad­dress­es as those of the Prime Min­is­ter, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan and for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, dis­cussed a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy to harm a jour­nal­ist, spy on the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP), of­fer the DPP a judge­ship to re­move him from of­fice, among oth­er acts.

The com­mis­sion had en­gaged in a lengthy le­gal bat­tle with email ser­vice provider, Google Inc, in the US and had ob­tained email cor­re­spon­dence for both the PM and the for­mer AG. It was yet to re­ceive in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to two oth­er ac­counts.

A par­al­lel in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the po­lice ser­vice is on­go­ing.

Law body con­cerned

The Law As­so­ci­a­tion is call­ing on Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to im­me­di­ate­ly in­ter­vene in the af­fairs of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of two mem­bers this week. The as­so­ci­a­tion's vice pres­i­dent Ger­ry Brooks made the call in a press re­lease yes­ter­day, hours af­ter the com­mis­sion's deputy chair­man, re­tired Ap­peal Court judge Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, sud­den­ly re­signed over the com­mis­sion's pub­lic com­ments on the ter­mi­na­tion of its Email­gate in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The day be­fore, an­oth­er com­mis­sion­er, Dr Shelly Anne Lalchan, had al­so end­ed her tenure at the com­mis­sion.

In his re­lease, Brooks said Ven­tour's state­ment that he de­cid­ed to quit over an er­ro­neous re­lease on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is­sued by the com­mis­sion on Tues­day had caused his or­gan­i­sa­tion "great con­cern."

He al­so called on the com­mis­sion's pres­i­dent, re­tired jus­tice of ap­peal Zain­ool Ho­sein, to make an im­me­di­ate pub­lic state­ment on the "se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions" made by Ven­tour.