Sean Nero

Sport Min­is­ter Brent San­cho yes­ter­day made it clear that his Min­istry's de­ci­sion to sus­pend fund­ing to the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) was not a re­sult of well pub­li­cised dif­fer­ences be­tween him­self and the ex­ec­u­tive of the na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion.

In­stead, he said, it was sim­ply to get the TTFA ex­ec­u­tive led by Ray­mond Tim Kee to com­mu­ni­cate to tax­pay­ers through the pre­sen­ta­tion of le­git­i­mate doc­u­ments, how mil­lions of dol­lars dis­bursed to it by the state was be­ing used.

On Sat­ur­day, the min­istry is­sued a me­dia re­lease which un­der­scored its pre­vi­ous po­si­tion and said na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies (NG­Bs) of sport in re­ceipt of fund­ing from the Min­istry of Sport and the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) must have au­dit­ed ac­counts in or­der to re­ceive sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment.

When con­tact­ed Min­is­ter San­cho said, "Most of the sport­ing gov­ern­ing bod­ies seem to have some sort of ac­count­ing sys­tem of struc­ture."

Mean­while, the TTFA in his view was delin­quent.

Asked for which pe­ri­od his min­istry want­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments from the Tim Kee ad­min­is­tra­tion, the min­is­ter said, "I will take any­thing. I will take it from when they changed the name."

The TTFA was for­mer­ly known as the T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion. The name of the or­gan­i­sa­tion was changed when Tim Kee be­came pres­i­dent in No­vem­ber 2012.

San­cho said, "At the end of the day, I am not try­ing to mind any­body's busi­ness. I am re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing tax-pay­ers mon­ey. It is my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that the en­ti­ty that we are giv­ing mon­ey to is A: fi­nan­cial­ly pru­dent and B: can ac­count for the mon­ey that they spend. We want to see what is their fi­nan­cial his­to­ry in terms of how they have done things."

He added, "The key is to bring all sport­ing gov­ern­ing bod­ies un­der one house in terms of au­dit­ing. Whether we use an ac­count­ing firm to do this or one per­son does all the ac­counts, so we will be con­sis­tent. That is the aim. I met with the Fed­er­a­tion back in Feb­ru­ary. Then I met with the pres­i­dent (Ray­mond Tim Kee). Now I am hear­ing ex­cus­es about com­put­ers be­ing tak­en away and that this Gov­ern­ment doesn't like foot­ball...doesn't like crick­et. I am not try­ing to get in­to any ar­gu­ment. I am just try­ing to treat every­one the same. My con­cern is the promis­es be­ing bro­ken. I gave them a fi­nal dead­line. I sent them a cor­re­spon­dence on Mon­day and I ex­pect every­thing to come to a res­o­lu­tion."

The min­is­ter ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that the ca­su­al­ties at the end of the day were the ath­letes, while staff at the TTFA, in­clud­ing its gen­er­al sec­re­tary Shel­don Phillip, was still get­ting their salaries.

"But when you look at the TTFA, look at the mere fact that coach­es aren't be­ing paid. That can't be right! These things have to stop! At the end of the day it is af­fect­ing the per­for­mance of our ath­letes. This Gov­ern­ment and pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment spent a lot of mon­ey in sport and we are not get­ting the re­sults we should get," said San­cho.