Trinidad & Tobago's Attorney General Anand Ramlogan

Helping Anand look back

The idiom "to be forewarned is to be forearmed" is known to the two silks at the head of the Government. But three weeks proved insufficient warning for the PM and AG to stall the AG's Anti-Corruption Investigative Bureau (ACIB) in its search for the journalist's confidential source. Contrary to what the AG describes as a "sudden, unexplained dramatic execution of a search warrant on the Newsday newspaper and the home of political journalist Andre Bagoo", the stage was set three weeks before. If they wished to act, the two silks could have intervened but chose not to.

In those three weeks, the PM and the AG, now stoic in defence of journalists and press freedom, may have discussed the matter with the Commissioner of Police. Except of course, the AG knows better than anyone else that the ACIB functions under the office of the AG and not the Commissioner.

After John Jeremie's May 2009 return for a second stint as AG, Ramlogan described the ACIB in his newspaper column as the AG's "private police army that can secretly do the bidding of the party in power" and wrote "the Anti-Corruption Bureau takes its orders from and reports directly to the AG."

Having made no change to the ACIB since assuming office, it is difficult for the AG to support his statement that the ACIB is now "on paper" listed under the portfolio of the AG but over which he has no jurisdiction. Unless this ACIB and Jeremie's ACIB are two different outfits, the ACIB is the business of the AG.

In fact weeks into his appointment the AG put his "private police army" into action without mentioning the Commissioner or other legal authority for the use of the ACIB. In August 2010 he announced his A-Team to investigate corruption in state companies. And he announced the ACIB's involvement: "These investigative works...will be conducted in consultation and collaboration and in conjunction with the ACIB."

Until now the AG has never linked the ACIB to the Commissioner or other supervisory authority. And in his announcement he never mentioned that the Commissioner had sanctioned the ACIB's involvement in the investigative work of his A-Team. What was clear from that announcement is the AG's hand-picked A-Team and ACIB's involvement was the work of the AG, entirely.