Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive Desk

A Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion has prompt­ed a crim­i­nal probe by the white-col­lar di­vi­sion of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), in­to the ac­tiv­i­ties of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA), a Pana­man­ian bank ac­count linked to its for­mer pres­i­dent David John-Williams and all busi­ness trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing the Home of Foot­ball project in Cou­va.

This in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes at a time when the sport of foot­ball and the cash-strapped TTFA is on the verge of fac­ing its dark­est ever mo­ment—sus­pen­sion by in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball’s gov­ern­ing body FI­FA come to­mor­row. (See page 54)

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was opened al­most one week af­ter the ex­clu­sive and ex­plo­sive CNC3 doc­u­men­tary ti­tled TTFA’s Se­cret Pana­ma Trail, which de­tailed some of John-Williams’ ac­tiv­i­ties re­gard­ing the Home of Foot­ball project while in of­fice. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was sparked by last Thurs­day’s doc­u­men­tary.

A high-pow­ered team of in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the TTPS’ Fraud Squad, An­ti-Cor­rup­tion Bu­reau(ACIB) and the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) met late Mon­day evening to dis­cuss the mat­ter and ini­ti­at­ed the for­mal crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia they took a spe­cial in­ter­est in the doc­u­men­tary that un­rav­elled ques­tion­able busi­ness trans­ac­tions, a hid­den Pana­man­ian bank ac­count and oth­er al­leged fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­eties dur­ing John-Williams’ tenure.

“The probe will be look­ing at fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment and malfea­sance at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion,” a se­nior po­lice source fa­mil­iar with the im­pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

Of crit­i­cal con­cern to in­ves­ti­ga­tors is the Pana­ma ac­count linked to John-Williams and un­cov­ered by Guardian Me­dia with the help of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors. Po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors would like to trace the source of funds in the ac­count and why it was first hid­den in off-the-shelf com­pa­nies. This was dis­closed yes­ter­day by one of the se­nior in­ves­ti­ga­tors man­dat­ed to work on the case.

The foren­sic re­port un­cov­ered the ac­count at the BPR Bank SA in Pana­ma, where two de­posits amount­ing to just over half a mil­lion US dol­lars were made in April and Au­gust 2017 and an­oth­er US$1m de­posit­ed in­to the ac­count in 2018—mak­ing it a to­tal of some US$1.5m found in the ac­count.

The monies were de­posit­ed to the ac­count af­ter it had been passed through an­oth­er ac­count in the names of two now-de­funct Pana­man­ian com­pa­nies—SOREG Inc and COL­SOL In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are al­so hop­ing to scour the TTFA bank ac­counts in an ef­fort to bet­ter un­der­stand the mon­ey trail. They will be at­tempt­ing to ver­i­fy if any oth­er ac­counts were used to trans­fer funds to Pana­ma for the busi­ness arrange­ment with ECOTEC—which pro­vid­ed the struc­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al for the Home of Foot­ball on the in­struc­tions of John-Williams at a cost of $282,653.85, or for any oth­er kind of busi­ness/bank­ing arrange­ment that had been sanc­tioned with­out the con­sul­ta­tion of the then TTFA board be­tween 2015 and 2019.

The lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the probe will be Su­per­in­ten­dent Ruben from the Fraud Squad and he will be as­sist­ed by heads and oth­er se­nior ACIB and FIB of­fi­cers in the ex­pan­sive trans-At­lantic in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Dur­ing the CNC 3 doc­u­men­tary, ques­tions were raised about who the main Home of Foot­ball con­trac­tor was, as ev­i­dence gath­ered point­ed to it be­ing John-Williams - who or­gan­ised the struc­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al and over­saw busi­ness with ECOTEC. The in­voic­es and ma­te­r­i­al were sent di­rect­ly to John-Williams.

John-Williams al­so made sev­er­al trips to Pana­ma dur­ing his tenure, un­known to any of his fel­low TTFA ex­ec­u­tives. FI­FA’s For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme reg­u­la­tions had warned about any pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est in the project.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say they will al­so be scru­ti­n­is­ing this busi­ness arrange­ment to in­quire if John-Williams may have al­leged­ly prof­it­ed in some way from the trans­ac­tion.

Sev­er­al for­mer and present TTFA of­fi­cials and oth­er key peo­ple are al­so ex­pect­ed to be in­ter­viewed by the po­lice in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. FI­FA of­fi­cials may al­so form part of the blan­ket of peo­ple to be in­ter­viewed if need­ed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are ex­pect­ed to in­ter­view three key peo­ple who may have in­ti­mate knowl­edge about cer­tain fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions that may have gone down over the last few years. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands sev­er­al oth­er bank ac­counts of key in­di­vid­u­als may al­so form part of the far-reach­ing probe.

The crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion comes at a time with FI­FA is locked in a le­gal bat­tle with the TTFA—who had been asked to with­draw its court mat­ter over the in­stal­la­tion of a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to re­struc­ture lo­cal foot­ball yes­ter­day or face pos­si­ble sus­pen­sion when the FI­FA Con­gress con­venes to­mor­row.