Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts said yes­ter­day that at no point was he ever the sub­ject of an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion probe, nor were any charges laid at his feet.At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing he pro­duced a state­ment from the com­mis­sion, say­ing he was shocked and stunned at T&T Guardian sto­ries.

Roberts said im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the first ar­ti­cle ap­peared he con­tact­ed his lawyer–his broth­er Shas­tri Roberts–who con­tact­ed the Com­mis­sion for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. He said the at­tor­ney re­ceived an e-mail at 3.15pm on Wednes­day from the Com­mis­sion.Roberts read the March 21 let­ter which stat­ed that he had not been re­ferred to the DPP "in any such form or man­ner or at all" as was de­scribed in the sto­ry.

A vis­i­bly an­gry Roberts lib­er­al­ly trashed au­thor of the ar­ti­cle Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford, ed­i­tor-in-chief Judy Ray­mond and Guardian Me­dia Ltd. He said he had sent all three pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters re­quir­ing an apol­o­gy, a front-page re­trac­tion and mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion and said he would go to court if this was not ob­tained.He said all three should be ashamed for let­ting down the pro­fes­sion in T&T.

Roberts said he nev­er spoke to Gumbs-San­di­ford and she "fab­ri­cat­ed" a quote in the sto­ry at­trib­uted to him.Quot­ing what he said was an in­ter­na­tion­al body for jour­nal­is­tic pro­pri­ety and a jour­nal­is­tic code of ethics, Roberts said mak­ing up quotes was one of the great­est sins of the pro­fes­sion.He said he would write to Ansa McAL's Ger­ry Brooks and "Mr Sab­ga" ask­ing if this was the way their jour­nal­ists op­er­at­ed and if this was the sort of ethics TG re­porters are taught to per­pe­trate on T&T.

He is al­so send­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter over the next week to COP chair­man Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, for her com­ments in the sec­ond sto­ry.

Min­is­ter Roberts to take sev­er­al to court in­clud­ing Min­is­ter Seep­er­sad-Bachan

Roberts said: "She failed to call me, her COP col­league, when the AG called me about the sto­ry, Roodal Mooni­lal called me, so did Jack Warn­er, Tim Gopeesingh and Fazal Karim. But my chair­man didn't call me. When I showed her the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's let­ter she was the on­ly one to read it twice and ques­tioned the ve­rac­i­ty of the con­tents and went on to mum­ble and mut­ter and I told her I hoped she hadn't made any state­ments on some­thing she failed to get the facts on."

Roberts praised COP leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, who he said hadn't rushed to judg­ment.He said he is al­so tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against Regi­nald Du­mas and Bish­nu Ra­goonath, who al­so com­ment­ed. But he said would ac­cept an apol­o­gy from both, since he said they were duped in­to speak­ing.He is al­so tak­ing le­gal ac­tion against i95FM, Daryan Mar­celle, An­dre Bap­tiste, Ri­car­do Phillips (for­mer Box­ing Board mem­ber), and Ian Prescott of the Trinidad Ex­press.

Roberts said he had shown the Prime Min­is­ter the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion's let­ter on Wednes­day and she looked pleased and re­lieved, "but she was sad­dened a jour­nal­ist in T&T could be so wicked, ma­li­cious and un­truth­ful," he said.

Say­ing jour­nal­is­tic ethics were dis­re­gard­ed, he said: "Any jour­nal­ist worth their salt will know if you had in­for­ma­tion, at least call the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and ask at least one ques­tion. No­body ask for a whole in­ter­view. But one phone call is all it would have tak­en to en­sure all this pain and suf­fer­ing would not have tak­en place and T&T would not have been dis­cussing a bla­tant un­truth.

"You call on us to be ac­count­able and at­tack us, but since you all are such bas­tions of in­tegri­ty I call on you jour­nal­ists to live up to your code of con­duct and be ac­count­able to your read­ers and lis­ten­ers and each oth­er–tell the truth."Roberts said he is a no-non­sense per­son, a man of in­tegri­ty whom no­body could cast as­per­sions on talk about cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty or mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds.

"I'm a stick­ler for ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and fair­ness and equal­i­ty for all," he added.