SENIOR Superintendent Solomon Koon Koon, who led the team of officers from the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACIB) during Thursday's execution of a search warrant at Newsday's offices on Chacon Street in Port of Spain, says the police were just doing their job.

In an interview with the Express at the ACIB's office at Independence Square, Port of Spain, yesterday, Koon Koon said the police were conducting an investigation pursuant to a report made to the Bureau by the Integrity Commission.

Asked why the police found it necessary to raid the office of the newspaper and the home of one of its senior journalists, Andre Bagoo, Koon Koon said he would not describe the activity as a raid.

"We conducted a search," he said.

"Some people may have been hurt by it, but I don't think we operated in a high-handed manner or abused anybody.

"Somehow there are people in this country who have a problem when the police don't do their work, and when the police do their work there is a problem. That is all I will have to say."

The warrant in Koon Koon's possession stated that Koon Koon had reasonable grounds for believing that documents (written or electronic), laptop(s), hard drive(s), mass storage devices and audio recordings relative to information, in an article written by Bagoo in December last year, were concealed on the premises of the media house.

The article concerned a legal feud between Integrity Commission chairman Ken Gordon and deputy chairman Gladys Gafoor, who was suspended on Thursday by President George Maxwell Richards, pending an investigation into a complaint made against her by other members of the Integrity Commission.

The warrant stated further that the material "will afford evidence as to the commission of a summary offence, namely breach of protection of information under Section 35(2) of the Integrity in Public Life Act Chapter 22:01".

That section reads: "Any member of the Commission and any person in the service of the Commission who discloses or attempts to disclose to any person other than a person to whom he is authorised under the Act any information or evidence received by the Commission under this Part, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and to imprisonment for five years."

Contacted yesterday for clarification on why the police may have found it necessary to extend their investigation to Newsday and Bagoo in probing the alleged misconduct of a member of the Integrity Commission, Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal said a search for evidence is not only confined to someone who may have committed an offence.

Seetahal directed the Express to Section 41(1) of the Summary Courts Act.

That section reads in part: "Any magistrate or justice who is satisfied, by proof upon oath, that there is reasonable ground for believing that there is in any building, vessel, carriage, box, receptacle, or place (a) anything upon or in respect of which any summary offence has been or is suspected to have been committed; (b) anything which there is reasonable ground for believing will afford evidence as to the commission of any such offence."