Richard Lord

US in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ex­pert Jon Berry­hill says the Sec­tion 34 e-mails pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing his a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Prime Min­is­ter on May 20 are "fraud­u­lent."Berry­hill was hired by Is­rael Khan, SC, who was re­tained by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the Sec­tion 34 e-mail mat­ter, which is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice.The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to con­duct its own in­ves­ti­ga­tion when a new board is ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona in a few days."The analy­sis of this doc­u­ment pro­vid­ed over­whelm­ing proof of its fraud­u­lent na­ture," Berry­hill said."There are many in­con­sis­ten­cies and ques­tion­able points that by them­selves would eas­i­ly lead any an­a­lyst to the con­clu­sion that none of the doc­u­ments can be trust­ed."

Berry­hill was ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Port-of-Spain last night to re­lease his foren­sic re­port and an­swer ques­tions from re­porters at a news con­fer­ence at Khan's of­fice on Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, this af­ter­noon.The e-mails from ad­dress­es of Per­sad-Bisses­sar, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials spoke about al­leged in­ten­tions of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to tap the phone of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) and the in­tim­i­da­tion of the Guardian jour­nal­ist who broke the sto­ry about the ear­ly procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011. That leg­is­la­tion would have made it pos­si­ble for two for­mer fi­nanciers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, a mem­ber of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion, to have their court mat­ters re­lat­ing to the Pi­ar­co Air­port project dis­missed.The al­le­ga­tions have been de­nied by Ram­lo­gan and oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. The ex­ec­u­tive sum­ma­ry of Berry­hill's re­port said in part: "The au­then­tic­i­ty of an e-mail mes­sage re­quires cor­rob­o­rat­ing in­for­ma­tion from mul­ti­ple sources."If the au­then­tic­i­ty of an e-mail is in ques­tion, a sin­gle-source print­ed copy would nev­er be suf­fi­cient to re­solve the is­sue," it added."The analy­sis of print­ed e-mails in the ab­sence of oth­er da­ta can nev­er prove its au­then­tic­i­ty."

Berry­hill, in his re­port said, "If an analy­sis dis­clos­es mul­ti­ple fa­tal flaws there can be no doubt the doc­u­ment has been tam­pered with and none of the doc­u­ments (e-mails) can be trust­ed." His re­port lists many of the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and in­con­sis­ten­cies pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pressed by Ram­lo­gan, in­clud­ing prob­lems with the head­er and Ram­lo­gan's four-char­ac­ter gmail ad­dress.He list­ed the most sig­nif­i­cant fa­tal flaws and pro­vid­ed an in-depth analy­sis of each mes­sage in the re­port.In a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Khan said Berry­hill's full re­port will be "dev­as­tat­ing" for all who think the e-mails were au­then­tic.The Guardian has been in­formed that Ram­lo­gan has re­tained the ser­vices of Pamela El­der, SC, in the e-mail in­ves­ti­ga­tions.