Rose­marie Sant

Gov­ern­ment has clipped the wings of Pan Trin­ba­go. The steel­band body, now mired in fi­nan­cial mess, will no longer be the sole au­thor­i­ty in charge of the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.

Cul­ture Min­is­ter Nyan Gadb­sy-Dol­ly told the T&T Guardian she had to act to "pro­tect the tax­pay­ers' purse and the in­ter­est of the pan­men, in light of al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety in­volv­ing the steel band or­gan­i­sa­tion."

Pan Trin­ba­go is a pri­vate non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, adding: "But our nexus is that the or­gan­i­sa­tion gets sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing for Panora­ma, which is the ma­jor na­tion­al fes­ti­val for the year. When it comes to Gov­ern­ment fund­ing we have to be very cir­cum­spect."

The last tranche of Pan Trin­ba­go's an­nu­al al­lo­ca­tion made late last year was $5 mil­lion which was to be used to pay re­mit­tances to pan­men for the 2016 Panora­ma. Cheques is­sued to pan­men by Pan Trin­ba­go on Thurs­day bounced.

Asked why the or­gan­i­sa­tion had no mon­ey Gads­by-Dol­ly said: "In its au­dit­ed ac­counts Pan Trin­ba­go has ad­mit­ted to a debt of $31 mil­lion. They owe sup­pli­ers, pan­men and bankers. When the Gov­ern­ment gave the $5 mil­lion as the bal­ance of the sub­ven­tion the cheque was made out in the name of the bankers. It could be that the very same bankers were owed mon­ey by Pan Trin­ba­go and they took the five mil­lion against the debt owed to them."

She said the min­istry has been frus­trat­ed in its at­tempts to get in­for­ma­tion from Pan Trin­ba­go.

"It has been dif­fi­cult to get a straight an­swer," she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said Pan Trin­ba­go in­di­cat­ed that it had used some of the $5 mil­lion to pay ex­pens­es for the bands which came from To­ba­go.

"They say it was more than they an­tic­i­pat­ed, but this does not gel with the in­for­ma­tion com­ing to the min­istry," she said.

"I asked and re­ceived the fi­nan­cials for bands com­ing from To­ba­go and the fig­ures do not add up. There is some con­fu­sion with re­spect to what they used the $5 mil­lion for."

The min­is­ter, who de­scribed the in­for­ma­tion from Pan Trin­ba­go as "neb­u­lous at times", ad­mit­ted to be­ing very con­cerned since is­su­ing bounced cheques is a crim­i­nal of­fence.

For­mer ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of Pan Trin­ba­go By­ron Ser­rette con­firmed that the steel­band or­gan­i­sa­tion has a huge out­stand­ing debt.

Ser­rette is no longer on the ex­ec­u­tive as he re­signed late last year af­ter rais­ing con­cerns about mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds. He re­ferred to the fi­nan­cial au­dit of the or­gan­i­sa­tion which in­di­cat­ed that the out­stand­ing debt was $31 mil­lion.

Ser­rette said by is­su­ing bounced cheques the pan or­gan­i­sa­tion had com­mit­ted "an­oth­er fraud against the mem­ber­ship."

The bounced cheques is the lat­est in a string of fi­nan­cial wor­ries for the Pan Trin­ba­go un­der the lead­er­ship of Kei­th Di­az. There were pre­vi­ous al­le­ga­tions of the pur­chase of a lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed that the Min­istry is aware of the al­le­ga­tions but did not step in when the al­le­ga­tions be­came pub­lic be­cause Pan Trin­ba­go is a pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion with a mem­ber­ship to whom they should be ac­count­ing.

"If this in­for­ma­tion can be borne out and it is fol­lowed by the non-pay­ment of play­ers' re­mit­tances, then it is clear that some­thing is wrong," she said.

'There is im­pro­pri­ety and the or­gan­i­sa­tion has not man­aged the sub­ven­tion al­lo­cat­ed to it to re­main fi­nan­cial­ly sol­vent."

She said even quan­ti­fy­ing the debt owed to pan­men had been an is­sue.

"First they said it was $5 mil­lion, then they said $7.8 mil­lion. We said we need to un­der­stand the ac­tu­al debt owed to the play­ers. They said they had $2.5 mil­lion and need­ed an ad­di­tion­al $2.5 mil­lion, that would have been the five mil­lion. We did not get the list we re­quest­ed."

NCC to col­lect

pan gate re­ceipts

The Min­is­ter said some of the dras­tic changes to come in­clude al­low­ing the NCC to now col­lect the gate re­ceipts from tick­et sales at Panora­ma.

"We will no longer be giv­ing Pan Trin­ba­go mon­ey. Prize mon­ey, mon­ey for sup­pli­ers and mon­ey for re­mit­tances for pan­men will now be made avail­able to the NCC," she said.

Apart from the mil­lions in sub­ven­tions the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceives from the State, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, Pan Trin­ba­go al­so gets all the mon­ey re­ceived from the gate from the sale of tick­ets.

She said: "We are tak­ing steps to put a val­ue on that be­cause it has been neb­u­lous and vague over the years. But this mon­ey was meant to help Pan Trin­ba­go."

She said un­of­fi­cial es­ti­mates put the fig­ure for gate re­ceipts for Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tions at over $10 mil­lion for 2016.

Giv­en what has tran­spired with the bounced cheques paid to the pan­men, the min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment and the NCC will now take over the process.

"NCC is tak­ing di­rect over­sight, so that the monies from the gate re­ceipts will go to the NCC," she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said al­though the Gov­ern­ment is sym­pa­thet­ic to the plight of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty and con­cerned that the mon­ey paid to Pan Trin­ba­go for re­mit­tances had not fil­tered down, it will be ir­re­spon­si­ble pay the mon­ey twice.

On Thurs­day when word spread that the cheques paid to pan­men had bounced, Gads­by-Dol­ly was in a meet­ing with NCC chair­man Ken­ny De Sil­va.

She said: "I can tell you that Pan Trin­ba­go came to the NCC and asked them to pro­vide an in­ter­im so­lu­tion which in­volved sign­ing a bank doc­u­ment but it is not some­thing that the NCC could have done."

Short­ly af­ter the re­quest was de­nied, Di­az took ill and had to be tak­en to St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre. As a re­sult of his falling ill Pan Trin­ba­go has post­poned a mem­ber­ship meet­ing which was sched­uled to take place to­day.

"We are look­ing on to see what the mem­ber­ship will do. They have said there will be no Panora­ma un­der the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive, but it is the mem­ber­ship who has to do some­thing about that. As the Gov­ern­ment, we are bound to in­ter­act with the du­ly elect­ed ex­ec­u­tive," the min­is­ter said.