A defence lawyer in the Basi-Virk corruption trial said Tuesday he is outraged the B.C. government is unable to find thousands of emails he believes would clear his client.

The emails, written between 2001 and 2005 by at least 15 key witnesses in the case, including Premier Gordon Campbell, several cabinet ministers and key staff, are either missing or irretrievable, a government lawyer told B.C. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

"We don't accept at face value that these things are a) lost; and b) if they have been lost in some sense that they're not recoverable," Michael Bolton, lawyer for David Basi, said Tuesday.

Basi was the ministerial assistant to then Finance Minister Gary Collins and Bob Virk was the ministerial assistant to then Transportation Minister Judith Reid in 2003 when the RCMP and Victoria police raided their offices in the B.C. legislature and seized documents relating to the privatization of the British Columbia Railway Co.

The men were charged in 2004 with fraud and breach of trust. It is alleged Basi and Virk leaked information to lobbyists about the deal that saw CN Rail acquire BC Rail in 2003 for $1 billion.

A third accused — Aneal Basi, who worked in government communications — is accused of money laundering.

Basi said the lost emails would prove the accused were acting on orders from higher up.

Bolton said the leaked information involving BC Rail actually came from inside cabinet because neither Basi nor Virk attended meetings where crucial information about the railway would have been discussed.

"It's a serious matter if evidence that ought to have been preserved, that is relevant in material, has been allowed to disappear," Bolton said of the missing emails.

Campbell said the government ensures all information that must be protected under privacy rules is protected.

"Emails are kept appropriately across government when it is a document that has specific relevance to, you know, government's activity. It's maintained," the premier said.

Bolton wanted to know how far the government had gone to find the missing correspondence: "What searches were made of the computers — of the individual persons whose emails we're seeking on this application? And how those searches were conducted and on what basis a conclusion was drawn that the emails were no longer available?"

NDP Public Safety critic Mike Farnworth said the fact the emails are missing is suspicious: "Either it's just gross incompetence or a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice."

The judge must now rule on whether the missing emails are relevant to the case before any further retrieval attempts are made.

With files from The Canadian Press