The report, well placed sources said, was submitted to Rowley yesterday morning prior to the meeting of Cabinet.
And even as the PM contemplates Smith’s future, there is now word that an e-mail witch-hunt in the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs to find the person or persons who leaked the information on the trip has turned up empty handed.
iBlog’s Sharmain Baboolal, who exposed the weekend trip to the Magdalena Grand in the first place, yesterday produced emails between acting permanent secretary in the ministry Natasha Brown and information communication manager Andre Hanief.
According to the email thread, on Tuesday Barrow asked Hanief to get IT unit to “look into the unauthorised circulation of an email message possibly originating from the ministry’s domain which was featured in an online blog post.” On Wednesday, Hanief sent an email to Barrow noting that because of the “integrity of this exercise, I’m requesting you assign an independent person (external or internal to the MYSA) to witness our investigation into this matter.” It was then he said the investigation would be done by himself and a network specialist who was on vacation. Barrow responded to Hanief by advising him that deputy permanent secretary Denise Arneaud would be the independent witness.
Hours later, Hanief reporting to Barrow that “upon investigation of the email accounts of all persons who were copied on the leaked emails (subject line THA Awards), no evidence was found of these persons forwarding the emails to anyone internally or externally.”
He said the email investigation started with the “retrieval of the original emails composed and sent from the computer used by Marina Elena Phillips, who is Smith’s personal secretary. The number of people copied in the email amounted to five.” He said there were “three individual email addresses and one group email comprising of four persons, the Permanent Secretary, Melissa Assam, Cindy Cupid and the minister’s secretary.”
With nothing found in those email accounts, Arneaud recommended that the accounts of two other people - Ian Ramdahin and Michael Seebarran - be examined. But that search was also unsuccessful and Hanief concluded that “no evidence was found of emails surrounding the THA Sports Awards being forwarded from any account listed.”
The email witch hunt on Wednesday was initiated hours before Rowley requested the report from Smith on the Tobago by the minister and officials from the ministry and the Sports Company of T&T to attend the THA Sports Awards last Saturday at the Magdalena Grand.
Although the matter did not come up in Cabinet yesterday, sources told the T&T Guardian Rowley was concerned that Smith had “cavalierly dismissed questions, saying it was at the Magdalena which is owned by the Government.”
According to reports, apart from the award ceremony a visit to the Dwight Yorke Stadium was the only other item on their itinerary. However, the stadium visit was done by two Sports Company officials.
