Haunted by e-mail

Published: January 24 2004 4:00 | Last Updated: January 24 2004 4:00

It can be tempting to regard e-mail as ephemeral - easily deleted without leaving any obvious physical presence. Yet many have come to realise that e-mails provide a record more permanent and indestructible than many older forms of communication. Messages sent by Conrad Black were cited last weekend in a claim from a company in his media empire for repayment of more than $200m (£108m). And Downing Street officials will learn next week what Lord Hutton made of their e-mails in his inquiry into the death of David Kelly, the weapons inspector.

The complaint filed against Lord Black accused him of taking money "through various improper means" from Hollinger International, which controls his newspaper interests. To demonstrate the Canadian-born press baron's contempt for the company's public shareholders, it damagingly quoted an e-mail in which he said Hollinger "served no purpose as a listed company other than relatively cheap use of other people's capital . . ."

The e-mails submitted to the Hutton inquiry could also feature in its final verdict. In Lord Hutton's investigation, they were a sizeable part of the evidence provided by Tony Blair's office. In many cases, they were the only record of exchanges between officials at crucial moments. Their publication so soon after the event provided electrifying insights into the role of the prime minister's advisers in compiling the Iraq dossier. What Lord Hutton made of them will be known only when he publishes his report on Wednesday. But the precedent has already led senior MPs to demand similar access to e-mails in future parliamentary inquiries, describing them as "the richest source of an audit trail".

This is hardly a new lesson. Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney-general, made devastating use of e-mails in his cases against Wall Street abuses. The most notorious was written by Henry Blodget of Merrill Lynch, describing as "a piece of shit" a company the investment bank publicly recommended.

The US government's case against Frank Quattrone, the former Credit Suisse First Boston banker charged with obstruction of justice and witness-tampering, appeared to hinge on a two-line e-mail. According to prosecutors, this urged employees to destroy material evidence after subpoenas had been issued for records of the bank's handling of high-technology company initial public offerings.

And it was an e-mail that led to the conviction of Arthur Andersen for impeding justice after the collapse of Enron, and indirectly to the accountancy firm's collapse. The jury concluded it showed the auditor had altered documents after Enron refused to go along with recommended changes to an internal memo.

Paper documents can be burnt and conversations held in circumstances that make eavesdropping very difficult. But, once sent, an e-mail leaves traces that may return to haunt the writer, long after the event.



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