Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said he has “no fear...I will have my day in Court with Roodal Mooni­lal and all those who slan­der me.”

These were the words of the prime min­is­ter as he ap­peared on I95.5 FM’s Take Two Thurs­day pro­gramme yes­ter­day break­ing his si­lence on al­le­ga­tions be­ing made against him by the op­po­si­tion MP.

Dr Row­ley said Mooni­lal and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have set about to im­pli­cate him in cor­rup­tion with A & V Drilling “sim­ply be­cause I know the man.”

“Roodal Mooni­lal slan­dered me in the worst way. Three times he came to the Par­lia­ment, on the sec­ond oc­ca­sion he came to The Par­lia­ment try­ing to slan­der me. He brought a doc­u­ment, a false doc­u­ment...show­ing bank ac­count num­ber, my name on it...he could do that in­side the Par­lia­ment. He is abus­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege but then he came out­side the Par­lia­ment and lift­ed that priv­i­lege and I sued him im­me­di­ate­ly, “ Row­ley said.

“While that is so, what’s worst is that he comes back to the Par­lia­ment again in this Bud­get De­bate and does not say a word about the bud­get, 53 bil­lion dol­lars of ex­pen­di­ture, the man did not say a word but he com­ing back again with doc­u­ments pur­port­ing to be bank trans­ac­tions with my name on it and he and his min­ions on Face­book are out there try­ing to give the im­pres­sion that not on­ly as the last PM, pre­vi­ous PMs were thieves but that this one is this too but I can tell the peo­ple of T & T to have no fear I will have my day in Court with Roodal Mooni­lal and all those who slan­der me be­cause the one thing I know I in­tend to fight like a Tiger to pro­tect, for me, my chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, my good name...long as you slan­der me I am go­ing to take you to Court, “ he added.

Dur­ing the Oropouche East MP’s bud­get con­tri­bu­tion he al­leged a “tan­gled web” in­volv­ing wire trans­fers, clan­des­tine meet­ings and se­cret sign­ing of doc­u­ments all hav­ing to do with the sale of the re­fin­ery to the Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU).

Al­though Dr Mooni­lal made no men­tion of cer­tain play­ers he al­lud­ed to a place in Pe­nal and al­so showed a doc­u­ment with the Prime Min­is­ter’s name on it.

On the is­sue of A & V Drilling and Petrotrin, Row­ley said the ac­tion tak­en by Petrotrin was pre­cip­i­tate and can­not be sup­port­ed by facts. He said the con­tract be­tween A&V Drilling and Petrotrin has pro­vi­sions for ar­bi­tra­tion.

Last week A&V Drilling’s at­tor­neys Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC, Prakash Ra­mad­har and oth­ers held a press con­fer­ence. He said what was dis­closed doesn’t sur­prise him.

“Petrotrin in­ter­nal re­port says that it al­ways had a prob­lem with in­ter­nal mea­sure­ment. I saw a re­port where that is­sue there was a rec­om­men­da­tion for the dis­ci­plin­ing of staff...I have noth­ing to say.”

The prime min­is­ter al­so sought to ad­dress the is­sue in re­la­tion to a com­pa­ny in­volved in a drug which caused sev­en pa­tients to go blind in ei­ther one eye or both eyes - a sto­ry that was first re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in the Sun­day Guardian on Oc­to­ber 6.

Dr Row­ley said he didn’t know much but said he is ex­pect­ing and hopes that the com­pa­ny be­hind the im­por­ta­tion of the drug could be iden­ti­fied.

“The oth­er as­pect...if deemed com­ing in il­le­gal, the il­le­gal­i­ty needs to be de­ter­mined if ac­ci­den­tal or crim­i­nal­i­ty...clear­ly if such a per­son can be iden­ti­fied as they ought to be be­cause some­body ad­min­is­tered the drug, it had to come from some­where...I am wait­ing to hear from the Min­is­ter of Health and the Le­gal De­part­ment, “ Row­ley said.

Back in Ju­ly, the Min­istry of Health re­called the im­port­ed in­jec­tion which con­tained Tri­am­cineclone Ace­tonide as its main in­gre­di­ent.

In the past four months, the sev­en pa­tients have un­der­gone eye re­moval surgery and are cur­rent­ly be­ing out­fit­ted with pros­thet­ic glass eyes.