Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive

A fi­nan­cial trail of se­cret Pana­ma deals, a hid­den Pana­man­ian bank ac­count and a hefty CON­CA­CAF loan no one had an inkling about are just some of the things un­earthed dur­ing a year-and-a-half-long Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the af­fairs of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) un­der the tenure of for­mer pres­i­dent David John-Williams be­tween 2015 and 2019.

Four­teen years af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go qual­i­fied for the FI­FA World Cup for the first time, the TTFA is on course to face sanc­tions from in­ter­na­tion­al gov­ern­ing body FI­FA for chal­leng­ing the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee sent in to re­or­gan­ise lo­cal foot­ball.

What this means is that should the re­cent­ly re­moved board led by William Wal­lace fail to with­draw a High Court case against FI­FA by Sep­tem­ber 16, T&T foot­ball will like­ly face its dark­est ever mo­ment - sus­pen­sion from in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball.

And while much of the fo­cus sur­rounds ac­tions tak­en by for­mer pres­i­dent Wal­lace, a Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion has found that it was the ac­tion of an­oth­er for­mer pres­i­dent that pushed T&T foot­ball to the brink.

David John-Williams

Guardian Me­dia has un­rav­elled a com­plex web of sus­pi­cious fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions done in the name of the Home of Foot­ball dur­ing its in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The fa­cil­i­ty, now be­ing used as a COVID-19 step-down cen­tre dur­ing the on­go­ing pan­dem­ic, was billed by Williams as the project to turn around the for­tunes of lo­cal foot­ball by gen­er­at­ing in­come to pay off the TTFA’s mas­sive debts. In­stead, it has now plunged it in­to fur­ther debt.

“Al­though it’s the Home of Foot­ball, it be­longs to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty for them to see it, touch it, feel it and to un­der­stand the truth of the Home of Foot­ball,” John-Williams said about the fa­cil­i­ty be­fore its open­ing.

On No­vem­ber 18, 2019, at the fa­cil­i­ty’s of­fi­cial open­ing, FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no laud­ed John-Williams for the project, say­ing it will en­sure his lega­cy.

“Well, this pres­i­dent, David John-Williams, has shown wis­dom and vi­sion be­cause he’s in­vest­ing in the fu­ture. And the re­sults of this in­vest­ment will be seen very clear­ly in the very near fu­ture,” In­fan­ti­no said then.

How­ev­er, John-Williams was oust­ed as FA pres­i­dent one week lat­er and in­deed his lega­cy lives on, but ar­guably for all the wrong rea­sons.

Guardian Media Investigative Editor Mark Bassant shows former TTFA president and owner of W Connection David John-Williams documents during an interview at the Brechin Castle Golf Course, Couva, on Tuesday evening.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The re­sult of the in­vest­ment is a TT$23.7 mil­lion struc­ture that re­mains un­fin­ished and an as­so­ci­a­tion in crip­pling debt, with mil­lions owed to con­trac­tors and ser­vice providers.

And that’s just the fi­nan­cial im­pact.

Lo­cal foot­ball has al­so been left in ru­in, with coach­es, of­fi­cials and play­ers left un­paid for years of hard work.

All this came de­spite John-Williams, be­tween the years 2015 to 2019, hav­ing ac­cess to mil­lions of US dol­lars in FI­FA For­ward Fund­ing Pro­gramme mon­ey, as well as funds re­leased by re­gion­al body CON­CA­CAF.

Where did FI­FA fund­ing go?

In ear­ly 2018, con­struc­tion be­gan on the foun­da­tion of the Home of Foot­ball project.

Through its For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, which aims to sup­port mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions with fi­nan­cial sup­port in dai­ly op­er­a­tions and de­vel­op­ment projects, FI­FA gave the TTFA US$2 mil­lion for the fa­cil­i­ty in ear­ly 2017.

While the fund­ing is usu­al­ly giv­en every four years, the pe­ri­od of an ex­ec­u­tive’s tenure, the TTFA re­ceived two sets of fund­ing dur­ing John-Williams’ four years in of­fice.

In Jan­u­ary 2019, he re­ceived the sec­ond tranche, even be­fore Wal­lace’s ad­min­is­tra­tion came in­to of­fice.

In June 2018, ac­cord­ing to Kei­th Look Loy, board mem­ber of Wal­lace’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive, John-Williams de­cid­ed to split the first set of US$2 mil­lion fund­ing in busi­ness trans­ac­tions in­volv­ing 15 com­pa­nies.

One of the invoices from Panama-based firm ECOTEC.

The 15 com­pa­nies, Look Loy said, were: Ge­ot­ech­ni­cal En­gi­neer­ing Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices, Aleron Lim­it­ed, CPML Con­trac­tors Lim­it­ed, Quin­tes­sen­tial De­sign So­lu­tions, ECOTEC EPS Con­struc­tion Tech­nolo­gies, Trans­bro­ker­age Ser­vices Ltd, Ready Mix (West In­dies) Trinidad Ltd, Trin­ri­co Steel and Wire Prod­ucts Ltd, Ka­mal Phuls­ingh, De­on George Weld­ing and Fab­ri­ca­tion, De­on George Weld­ing and Fab­ri­ca­tion, Clophas Med­i­na Lim­it­ed, A.M.A Trans­port and Con­tract Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Ram­la­gan Gen­er­al Hard­ware, Point Lisas Steel Prod­ucts Ltd and Ale­scon Ready Mix.

This method then, TTFA ex­ec­u­tives said, al­lowed the then pres­i­dent to cir­cum­vent hav­ing to put the con­tracts up for ten­der.

There was no record at the board lev­el of the com­pa­nies se­lect­ed, ac­cord­ing to for­mer TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han.

“Even af­ter the com­pa­nies were con­tract­ed, ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers nev­er saw bills or in­voic­es for the project,” Ramd­han said when Guardian Me­dia spoke to him sev­er­al weeks ago.

These prac­tices oc­curred de­spite FI­FA Project Man­ag­er Solomon Mudege’s list of stip­u­la­tions up­on the grant­i­ng of the fund­ing for the project.

In Ju­ly 2017, Mudege wrote to then as­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, say­ing, first­ly, any con­tract or pur­chase of sup­plies more than US$300,000 must be sub­ject to a ten­der process. Sec­ond­ly, any con­tract un­der US$50,000 could be award­ed to a sin­gle con­trac­tor or sup­pli­er and third­ly, se­lec­tive ten­der­ing re­quired three quotes be­fore any con­tract could be award­ed.

How­ev­er, when Wal­lace came in­to of­fice, he said he found no ev­i­dence that any of those rec­om­men­da­tions were fol­lowed.

This al­lowed John-Williams to by­pass the board and hand­pick con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers for the project, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tives.

One of the invoices from Panama-based firm ECOTEC.

In ad­di­tion to the US$2 mil­lion spe­cial fund­ing for the Home of Foot­ball project, John-Williams, as then-pres­i­dent, had ac­cess to an­oth­er $1.25 mil­lion in an­nu­al op­er­a­tional cost al­lo­ca­tions from FI­FA in 2018.

De­spite this, the fol­low­ing em­bar­rass­ing events hap­pened that year.

In Ju­ly 2018, the T&T Un­der-15 women’s team was un­able to com­pete in the CON­CA­CAF Cham­pi­onship in Flori­da af­ter the TTFA failed to pro­vide fund­ing for the team to get US visas in time.

In Au­gust 2018, then T&T Un­der-20 men’s coach Rus­sell Lat­apy stopped team train­ing af­ter hun­dreds of thou­sands in salaries for him and his staff went un­paid for more than a year.

In Sep­tem­ber 2018, the T&T se­nior women’s team could not af­ford to en­ter in­to a pre-tour­na­ment train­ing camp in North Car­oli­na and re­sort­ed to seek­ing pub­lic help on so­cial me­dia and gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance.

Min­is­ter of Sport Sham­fa Cud­joe even­tu­al­ly an­swered their call, pro­vid­ing a cheque for more than US$60,000. But Cud­joe wasn’t pleased about the cir­cum­stances be­hind it though, say­ing, “They are our flag­bear­ers and we have a du­ty to en­sure that they are treat­ed with dig­ni­ty, com­pas­sion and re­spect, and this na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment could have been avoid­ed and must nev­er be al­lowed to hap­pen again.”

Some invoices from Panama-based firm ECOTEC.

2017 hard­ly dif­fer­ent to 2018

Be­tween No­vem­ber 2016 and Jan­u­ary 2017, T&T’s na­tion­al team had three man­agers - Stephen Hart, who was fired, Bel­gian Tom Saint­fi­et, who re­signed and Den­nis Lawrence, who re­placed Saint­fi­et.

Just a few months in­to his tenure, Lawrence and his staff com­plained about not re­ceiv­ing salaries on time. Lawrence, lat­er fired in De­cem­ber 2019, achieved a 16% win­ning record.

In Feb­ru­ary 2017, for­mer man­ag­er Hart sued the TTFA for US$714,000 for wrong­ful dis­missal and out­stand­ing salaries.

In May 2017, the T&T Fut­sal team sued the TTFA for un­paid salaries and ex­pens­es to­talling more than US$65,000. The as­so­ci­a­tion was lat­er or­dered in 2018 to pay the fig­ure plus le­gal costs in com­pen­sa­tion.

In late 2017 in­to 2018, the T&T se­nior men’s team did not re­ceive match fees amount­ing to close to US$100,000.

These le­gal bat­tles left the or­gan­i­sa­tion with a debt of more than US$1.7 mil­lion at that time.

Lots of ma­te­r­i­al

Af­ter writ­ing to FI­FA’s mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion di­rec­tor Veron Mosen­go-Om­ba in Ju­ly 2017, ask­ing for per­mis­sion for the TTFA, and not a con­trac­tor, to pur­chase struc­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al for the Home of Foot­ball project, John-Williams was grant­ed per­mis­sion to do so.

This ap­proach, John-Williams claimed, would have saved the TTFA and se­lect­ed con­trac­tors mon­ey.

“The as­so­ci­a­tion is in the for­tu­nate po­si­tion to have the nec­es­sary in-house ex­per­tise to col­lab­o­rate with project man­agers and make ed­u­cat­ed de­ci­sions on the con­struc­tion ac­tiv­i­ty,” John-Williams wrote in a let­ter to Mosen­go-Om­ba months af­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to for­mer TTFA ex­ec­u­tive Look Loy and oth­ers, the then board had ma­jor con­cerns about this move.

Giv­en John-Williams’ back­ground as a con­trac­tor, there was a pos­si­ble con­flict of in­ter­est, the board felt then. And with the then-pres­i­dent fail­ing to pro­vide them with in­for­ma­tion about the project, they weren’t sure who the main con­trac­tor for the project was.

Those an­swers re­mained unan­swered dur­ing the en­tire­ty of the project, ac­cord­ing to mem­bers of the then board.

Ac­cord­ing to our find­ings though, there is rea­son to be­lieve that the con­trac­tor for the project was none oth­er than John-Williams him­self.

Guardian Me­dia has dis­cov­ered that the for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent over­saw busi­ness trans­ac­tions with a Pana­man­ian com­pa­ny called ECOTEC.

But when asked re­cent­ly about his de­ci­sion to con­duct busi­ness with ECOTEC, al­leged­ly with­out board ap­proval, John-Williams re­fused to an­swer the ques­tion, say­ing, “Mr Bas­sant, I’m not talk­ing to any me­dia.”

John-Williams al­so made sev­er­al trips to the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try dur­ing his tenure, un­known to any of his fel­low ex­ec­u­tives.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained de­tails of his des­ti­na­tions in 2018 and 2019 and the short times he spent while there. In­voic­es, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, showed the trans­ac­tion in­volv­ing the ex­change of goods to be de­liv­ered for the Home of Foot­ball.

Signed by John-Williams and ECOTEC’s com­mer­cial di­rec­tor Juan Jose Cano Al­vara­do, the in­voic­es amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$282,653.85.

Ac­cord­ing to the in­voic­es, the ma­te­ri­als pur­chased in­clud­ed: ther­mal pan­els, drymix and pro­form blocks.

Cus­toms doc­u­ments ob­tained showed that be­tween Feb­ru­ary and May 2018, 40 con­tain­ers with ma­te­r­i­al for the Home of Foot­ball ar­rived from Pana­ma at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

The in­voic­es and ma­te­ri­als were sent di­rect­ly to John-Williams, sug­gest­ing he was the con­trac­tor for the project.

In con­tra­ven­tion of Ar­ti­cle 8 D of FI­FA’s For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme reg­u­la­tions, which states that as­so­ci­a­tions may on­ly use bonafide ac­counts to trans­act project busi­ness, the ma­te­ri­als were paid via RBC and Re­pub­lic Banks ac­counts, when all three of TTFA’s ac­counts are at First Cit­i­zens.

FI­FA de­posit­ed its fund­ing in­to those First Cit­i­zens ac­counts. Ramd­han, the for­mer TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary who had knowl­edge about these First Cit­i­zens bank ac­counts, al­so ver­i­fied this to Guardian Me­dia.

Asked why he de­cid­ed to use Roy­al Bank and Re­pub­lic Bank ac­counts to pay ECOTEC, John-Williams, whom we caught play­ing golf in Cou­va, claimed, “I don’t know about any Roy­al Bank ac­count, Mr Bas­sant, but if you say we use Roy­al Bank, fine.”

These trans­ac­tions, of course, came at a time when the as­so­ci­a­tion was un­able to meet even op­er­a­tional costs.

And apart from the US$300,000 spent in ma­te­r­i­al from ECOTEC, there were sig­nif­i­cant ship­ping costs. This in­clud­ed a US$53,268 fee for de­mur­rage - a late fee for fail­ing to clear ship­ments that had ar­rived at the port.

The de­lay, ac­cord­ing to ship­ping sources, was be­cause John-Williams didn’t have enough US cur­ren­cy, de­spite re­ceiv­ing US$2 mil­lion for the project in 2017.

The for­mer TTFA boss re­fused to an­swer ques­tions Guardian Me­dia posed to him about the de­mur­rage, as well as the rea­sons for his fail­ure to clear the con­tain­ers.

Break­down of cost to ECOTEC

ECOTEC MA­TE­RI­ALS- $282,653.85 US

FREIGHT- $86,055 US

VAT ON THE SHIP­MENT- $46,422.82 US

PORT RENT – $47,896.16 US

TRANS­PORT- $11,571.42 US

THE PANA­MA DOC­U­MEN­TA­TION: $7,096.35 US

BRO­KER­AGE - $6,428.57 US

DE­MUR­RAGE- $ 53,268 US

TO­TAL- $546,392US

The ECOTEC in­voic­es for two of the con­tain­ers al­so con­tained in­con­sis­ten­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ments, one con­tain­er con­tained ther­mo pan­els, while the oth­er had pro­form, oth­er ma­te­ri­als and two monomix ma­chines. On the in­voice, the two monomix ma­chines were val­ued at US$8,200 each. How­ev­er, on the cus­toms form C82, the monomix ma­chines were not list­ed. And ac­cord­ing to ship­ping sources, the ma­chines were not in­side the con­tain­ers ex­am­ined.

The ma­chines bizarrely ap­peared on the con­struc­tion site of the Home of Foot­ball lat­er on but then they dis­ap­peared in No­vem­ber 2019.

A po­lice re­port was filed by for­mer TTFA sec­re­tary Ramd­han on March 20, 2020, but they are yet to be re­cov­ered.

With no in­di­ca­tion on ECOTEC’s web­site that they car­ry monomix ma­chines, Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed ECOTEC’s com­mer­cial man­ag­er, Juan José Cano Al­vara­do, by phone on Au­gust 17.

At first, Alavara­do said the com­pa­ny did not sell the ma­chines. But up­on hear­ing about the TTFA’s pur­port­ed pur­chase, he claimed the com­pa­ny did sell the ma­chines.

Former president of the TTFA David John Williams.

De­spite the pumps be­ing val­ued at US$8,200 on the in­voice, Alavara­do claimed the cost of one ma­chine was at least US$14,000.

“David con­tact­ed ISO­TEX - Venezuela and they sent it to us since they do not han­dle pro­duc­tion for the eco­nom­ic rea­sons that we know in Venezuela,” Alavara­do said when asked who con­tact­ed him from Trinidad to do busi­ness.

Alavara­do said ECOTEC en­sured pay­ment was con­firmed be­fore ma­te­ri­als were de­liv­ered.

When ques­tioned about in­voic­es which seem­ing­ly show that John-Williams paid for ECOTEC ma­te­r­i­al with mon­ey from non-TTFA ac­counts, the for­mer TTFA boss de­clined to an­swer.

John-Williams al­so de­clined to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly about the pur­chase of the two monomix ma­chines as he strolled through the Sevil­la Golf Course with a golf club in hand.

In 2018, as con­firmed by im­mi­gra­tion sources, John-Williams made sev­en over­seas trips. Of spe­cial in­ter­est were his trips to Pana­ma, with his first trip to the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try com­ing on Jan­u­ary 17, 2018.

His two-day vis­it came ap­prox­i­mate­ly one month be­fore he sub­mit­ted the in­voic­es for ECOTEC to FI­FA of­fi­cials for the Home of Foot­ball. In De­cem­ber 2018, he trav­elled to Pana­ma City again, re­turn­ing to Trinidad three days lat­er.

“Based on our de­tailed in­for­ma­tion, you trav­elled to Pana­ma in 2017 and al­so in Jan­u­ary 2018 and De­cem­ber 2018. I have all your trav­el doc­u­ments and records. Was that on­ly to con­duct busi­ness with ECOTEC, or was it al­so to at­tend to your Pana­man­ian bank ac­count at BPR Bank?” Guardian me­dia asked John-Williams.

He laughed.

With re­port­ing by Joshua Seemu­n­gal.

Part Two - Fol­low­ing the Mon­ey Trail and Im­pli­ca­tions