Richard?Lord

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts, Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, says a re­view is to be car­ried out to de­ter­mine if Pan Trin­ba­go is pro­vid­ing val­ue for mon­ey in the wake of al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion made by out­go­ing vice pres­i­dent Bry­on Ser­rette.

She made the com­ment in a brief in­ter­view with re­porters fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing in Par­lia­ment.

"We have to look very care­ful­ly now at whether we are get­ting val­ue for mon­ey with re­spect to the mon­ey giv­en to Pan Trin­ba­go for Panora­ma, so yes that will oc­cu­py quite a lot of time and the fo­cus of our dis­cus­sions," she said.

Pan Trin­ba­go is still ow­ing pan play­ers mon­ey for per­for­mances in com­pe­ti­tions it held in pre­vi­ous years.

But Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (NCC) "would have giv­en the out­stand­ing bal­ance of the 2015/16 sub­ven­tion to Pan Trin­ba­go." She said the amount giv­en was $5 mil­lion and Pan Trin­ba­go re­ceived it the last week of Oc­to­ber.

"If there is any de­lay in the pay­ments that will be a ques­tion as to why Pan Trin­ba­go had not re­mit­ted the pay­ments to the play­ers," she said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions on the al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion in Pan Trin­ba­go, Gads­by-Dol­ly said her min­istry's in­ter­ac­tion with Pan Trin­ba­go was "re­al­ly with re­spect to the monies for Panora­ma, so their in­ter­nal pol­i­tics, we are not privy to it nor are we get­ting in­to it."

She ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that the Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the al­le­ga­tions as they re­late to "fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and those con­cern us be­cause they (Pan Trin­ba­go) are en­trust­ed with large amounts of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to run the Panora­ma."

She said since the al­le­ga­tions were made she was "in con­tact with the chair­man of the NCC (and) we have been speak­ing about what our ap­proach would be, based on these al­le­ga­tions." How­ev­er, she said, no de­fin­i­tive po­si­tion on their ap­proach has as yet been tak­en.

"We are look­ing at it be­cause as you would know, we would feel a bit trou­bled by these kinds of al­le­ga­tions that have been hit­ting the me­dia. We have not made a fi­nal de­ci­sion but we are ac­tive­ly dis­cussing it and by next week we should make a de­ci­sion on the way for­ward," Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Asked if she would be seek­ing a re­port on the mat­ter from Pan Trin­ba­go, Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that the steel­band body sub­mits au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments "so we are go­ing to be look­ing very close­ly at those that were sub­mit­ted and we may ask for them to pro­vide some ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence of their fi­nan­cial sta­tus."

Body re­sponds

Mean­while, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, Pan Trin­ba­go said it had not­ed the state­ments made by Ser­rette, which it said were in­im­i­cal to the best in­ter­ests of Pan Trin­ba­go.

Say­ing Ser­rette had en­dorsed the man­age­ment of the or­gan­i­sa­tion through­out his tenure, the re­lease said, "We have not­ed the con­tents of what has been said by Mr. Ser­rette and do not find favour with them, most of these state­ments are er­ro­neous. It should be not­ed that through our au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, Pan Trin­ba­go has ac­count­ed for every dol­lar re­ceived from gov­ern­ment and all oth­er sources.

"It has been said in some quar­ters that Mr Ser­rette's am­bi­tion is to be Pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go. We have no quar­rel with this but we con­tin­ue to be a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion and we strive al­ways to do the best for our mem­ber­ship."

It added that Pan Trin­ba­go was pur­su­ing its le­gal op­tions in the mat­ter.