A report in the Saturday Star that tens of millions of rands had been sourced from the Presidency and pumped into the now banned drug Virodene was based on innuendo, the Presidency said on Saturday.
Mukoni Ratshitanga, spokesperson for the Presidency, said the story was devoid of concrete facts and ”tantamount to an attempt to discredit the public policy positions taken by the government”.
He was responding to a report in the Saturday Star that millions of rands flowed from the Union Buildings to the developers of Aids drug Virodene, Olga and Zigi Visser, throughout 2000 and early 2001.
According to the report, the government’s link to Virodene appeared to taper out around 2001, ”shortly after the Virodene trial then under way in Tanzania was aborted”.
Ratshitanga said the quote attributed to him in the Saturday Star that ”there was some kind of contact … between the president and the researcher of Virodene [Olga Visser]”, was false.
”I did not and could not have specified a single individual as having had contact with the researchers as this was not the question that was asked of me.”
Nevertheless, he said the singling out of the president seemed ”intended to lend credence to the overall thrust of the story, which insinuates impropriety on the part of the President”. — Sapa