“We had no con­cern with that.”

Such was Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­sponse Fri­day when asked by Op­po­si­tion MP Roodal Mooni­lal if Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about ac­cept­ing a vis­it from Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez 24 hours af­ter her boss, Nicholas Maduro, was in­dict­ed by the Unit­ed States on mon­ey laun­der­ing, drug traf­fick­ing and nar­co-ter­ror­ism charges.

Row­ley was grilled by UNC MPs in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day about Ro­driguez’s March vis­it and the fu­el ship­ment sold by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny to Aru­ba and which was al­leged to have found its way to Venezuela, which is un­der US sanc­tion. The US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain has not­ed the fu­el ship­ment is­sue and al­so that Ro­driguez is among Venezue­lan of­fi­cials sanc­tioned by the US gov­ern­ment.

On Op­po­si­tion queries, Row­ley said Ro­driguez’s vis­it was in re­sponse to the COVID-19 emer­gency and there was no pre-arranged agen­da. He said Ro­driguez was ap­point­ed Venezuela’s na­tion­al COVID re­sponse head in Feb­ru­ary and a few days lat­er sought a cour­tesy call on March 26.

“Our con­cern was the threat Venezuela posed to us,” he added.

No Venezue­lan health of­fi­cial was present for the talks. Row­ley ex­plained that the con­text of the con­ver­sa­tion on COVID con­cerned na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions and “as such the rel­e­vant peo­ple were re­quired.”

He said those were T&T’s For­eign Af­fairs and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters.

“Dis­cus­sions had noth­ing to do with the bi­o­log­i­cal na­ture or man­age­ment of the virus,” the PM said.

He said Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned that with Venezuela sev­en miles off T&T, it could “sup­ply T&T with a flood of refugees who may be car­ry­ing the virus.” Giv­en that T&T need­ed to keep bor­ders closed and en­sure Venezuela didn’t pose a threat to T&T, the is­sue was a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty one which didn’t re­quire med­ical doc­tors.

He sid the three T&T mem­bers at the meet­ing – him­self, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young – are mem­bers of T&T’s Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.On re­ports that Ro­driguez was asked to ini­tial­ly post­pone the trip since she had the flu and whether there’d been need to test her, Row­ley said he wasn’t re­spon­si­ble for her med­ical con­di­tion.

“I’m not the doc­tor for the Pres­i­dent or Vice Pres­i­dent,” he said.

He said the Paria fu­el ship­ment’s con­tract was amend­ed and it was de­ter­mined the fu­el go­ing to Aru­ba was ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed for St Eu­sta­tius. He con­firmed the con­tract for the ship­ment had a clause ad­dress­ing trade sanc­tions. He said it was a com­mer­cial con­tract with terms that in­di­cat­ed there are li­a­bil­i­ties if the con­tract was breached. But he said he couldn’t dis­close the na­ture of the con­tract since its terms would en­sure the li­a­bil­i­ty na­ture wouldn’t be avail­able to him.

“Com­mer­cial con­tracts car­ry terms and con­di­tions… But I know there was a clause for the buy­er to ob­serve in­ter­na­tion­al trade sanc­tions,” Row­ley said.

He couldn’t say if the clause was in place with any oth­er con­tracts, not­ing he wasn’t fa­mil­iar with oth­ers. Nor would he say the ex­act price the ship­ment was sold at.

“ Trade se­crets are valu­able to the T&T peo­ple and won’t be dis­closed,” the PM said.

House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George dis­al­lowed Mooni­lal’s query on if Row­ley would ask the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to probe whether the con­tract breached “in sell­ing to an em­bar­goed state.”