In the face of an im­pend­ing crim­i­nal com­plaint to be filed by fired na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, gov­ern­ment's chief pub­lic re­la­tions con­sul­tant Ernie Ross has changed his tune and is now con­firm­ing he did meet with Grif­fith and his wife at his St Clair of­fice last Thurs­day.

That meet­ing, which took place hours af­ter Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) di­rec­tor David West filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint against for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, was first made pub­lic by Grif­fith and had been stout­ly de­nied by Ross and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

Grif­fith, who has been iden­ti­fied as a crit­i­cal wit­ness in sup­port of West's com­plaint, had threat­ened to tell all about the de­tails of what took place at that meet­ing. The for­mer min­is­ter said then his wife, Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, chair of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, and Bharath were present at that meet­ing.Ross de­nied Bharath was part of the meet­ing and the min­is­ter al­so said he was not present.

De­tails of those dis­cus­sions have now formed part of Grif­fith's re­port to the po­lice. The po­lice will now have to de­ter­mine whether Ross' in­ter­ven­tion amount­ed to an at­tempt to per­vert the course of jus­tice by re­port­ed­ly ad­vis­ing Grif­fith to with­draw his wit­ness state­ment in sup­port of West.

On Sun­day, just hours be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made her fourth Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in as many years, Bharath sent out a state­ment con­demn­ing Grif­fith for ac­cus­ing Cab­i­net mem­bers of at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence him to back off from sup­port­ing West.Grif­fith shot back, say­ing he had nev­er made such a claim and Bharath nev­er con­sult­ed him be­fore send­ing out the state­ment.

In an in­ter­view on Tues­day, Ross, when ques­tioned aboaut the meet­ing de­nied it ever took place and said the mat­ter was now in the hands of his lawyers.But yes­ter­day, Ross in a tele­phone in­ter­view ad­mit­ted he met with Grif­fith and Dy­er-Grif­fith on Thurs­day, just as Grif­fith had orig­i­nal­ly stat­ed.He said he sat in that meet­ing in an "in­for­mal" role but de­nied Bharath was a part of it.Ross has a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment in to­day's news­pa­per in a bid to "set the record straight."

In that re­lease, Ross said he "con­vened the meet­ing as a me­dia ad­vis­er" to the for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty."The ad stat­ed: "As is prop­er, the for­mer min­is­ter Mr Grif­fith and his wife, Ms Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith, were both ad­vised at the on­set of the meet­ing and dur­ing the ses­sion that the dis­cus­sions were en­tire­ly in their in­ter­est and there was no at­tempt to change the ve­rac­i­ty of state­ments.

"At all times the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to pre­pare the min­is­ter for scruti­ny of the me­dia, pub­lic and Op­po­si­tion par­ty." Ross said the role he played was sim­i­lar to what he had done on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions with many oth­er Cab­i­net min­is­ters, ad­vis­ing them as is­sues arose.The mat­ter of Ross' al­leged in­volve­ment in pos­si­ble crim­i­nal con­duct, was raised yes­ter­day by jour­nal­ists in Guyana with the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Car­olyn Ro­drigues-Bir­kett.

Ro­drigues-Bir­kett told Guyana me­dia Ross would have to ex­plain the back­ground to the sit­u­a­tion to her, ac­cord­ing to two Guyanese re­porters.Ross, a Guyanese na­tion­al, is the hon­orary con­sul gen­er­al to T&T.Ross yes­ter­day pro­duced a press state­ment from Ro­drigues-Bir­kett's min­istry say­ing he had pro­vid­ed the re­quest­ed in­for­ma­tion and that her min­istry "re­pos­es its con­fi­dence" in his ex­pla­na­tion.

"As Hon­orary Con­sul Gen­er­al, Ross is per­mit­ted to func­tion in oth­er ca­pac­i­ties," the re­lease said.