UNC MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says he’s tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley over a mat­ter which oc­curred out­side Par­lia­ment.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting, Mooni­lal said he’d dropped a let­ter on his le­gal mat­ter on Row­ley’s desk.

“You could say any­thing about me, I tak­ing on any one of them. Any day. Any time. Any place,” he told the House.

He sub­se­quent­ly told the T&T Guardian the mat­ter con­cerned al­leged re­marks about Kirk Wait­he.

In de­bate, Mooni­lal al­so claimed there are doc­u­ments show­ing Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Ltd bought im­port­ed fu­el “from the same man we sold it to.”

Claim­ing Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Ltd was en­gag­ing in some­thing “dark, sus­pi­cious and clan­des­tine” he said in­voic­es show that US$500,000 and 50,000 bar­rels of oil can’t be ac­count­ed for.

But Row­ley, ac­cus­ing Mooni­lal of seek­ing sound­bites, said Paria was a trad­ing com­pa­ny which buys and sells de­pend­ing on T&T’s needs and Paria’s trad­ing busi­ness. He said Paria’s buy­ing from the mar­ket and sell­ing to the mar­ket was noth­ing new.

He said the UNC had orig­i­nat­ed al­le­ga­tions about the re­cent con­tro­ver­sial Paria fu­el ship­ment is­sue that gave birth to lies on Paria. But he said Paria had tak­en out whole page ads to show oth­er­wise and Gov­ern­ment had demon­strat­ed to the world the al­le­ga­tions were un­true.

“We’re not afraid of any­one but Paria didn’t trade with Venezuela on that (ship­ment is­sue), why are you so hell-bent on la­belling our com­pa­ny and peo­ple as break­ing (US) sanc­tions - what’s in it for you?’’ Row­ley asked.

—Gail Alexan­der