Al­most two years af­ter it was dis­cov­ered that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board mis­al­lo­cat­ed al­most $3 mil­lion in fund­ing from the NGC, and six months af­ter the NGC re­quest­ed the TTCB to re­pay that mon­ey forth­with, the two bod­ies are still work­ing on a way for­ward.

"The NGC is still in ac­tive dis­cus­sions with the TTCB as a fol­low up to the au­dit to de­ter­mine a way for­ward." said NGC com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er; Lisa Bur­kett.

The orig­i­nal au­dit, which was com­plet­ed in March 2017 for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2016, showed that $2,983,000 was spent with­out ap­proval by the NGC and not in ac­cor­dance with the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU).

When that au­dit came in­to the pub­lic do­main in Ju­ly last year, it brought the TTCB in­to se­ri­ous dis­re­pute even though the NGC nev­er pro­nounced on the mat­ter ex­cept to con­firm the au­then­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ment.

But to­day, just one day be­fore the TTCB's elec­tion in which pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath is seek­ing a fourth term and which he is ex­pect­ed to con­test un­op­posed, there are now ques­tions about whether the in­cum­bent TTCB pres­i­dent lied to his ex­ec­u­tive about the sta­tus of the mat­ter dur­ing a meet­ing of the board in Ju­ly last year.

Ac­cord­ing to strong­ly word­ed a let­ter from the NGC’s pres­i­dent Mark Lo­quan to the TTCB dat­ed Ju­ly 13th 2018, the NGC re­quest­ed: “The sum of TT$2,983,552.99 not spent in ac­cor­dance with the clear pro­vi­sions of the MOU will be al­lo­cat­ed in the man­ner and cat­e­gories stip­u­lat­ed in the MOU and that this will be done forth­with by the TTCB and from its own funds.."

Bas­sarath ap­par­ent­ly wrote back to the NGC on Ju­ly 23rd ac­knowl­edg­ing re­ceipt of the "cor­re­spon­dence" and re­quest­ing a meet­ing with them along with of­fi­cials from the Min­istry of Sport and Sport Com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er min­utes from a TTCB ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on Ju­ly 28th 2018, at the height of the fall­out over the mat­ter, showed that Bas­sarath as­sured board mem­bers that the MOU al­lowed the TTCB to re­al­lo­cate the funds, and that the board re­ceived no let­ter of dis­pute from NGC. Bas­sarath al­so told mem­bers that the NGC Had not sent any of­fi­cial doc­u­ment to the TTCB.

In fact, in Lo­quan’s let­ter to the TTCB, the NGC pres­i­dent fur­ther stat­ed that ad­di­tion­al doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the TTCB af­ter the au­dit did not change the find­ings. In fact, he said it has sought to fur­ther con­firm the find­ings of the au­dit re­port."

When Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed reached out to Bas­sarath yes­ter­day for com­ment on the is­sue, he did not an­swer our calls nor re­spond to our text mes­sages.