Rhon­dor Dowlat

Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Shel­don Phillips says he is await­ing the re­sults of the find­ings of a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to fraud at the TTFA. Po­lice are prob­ing how the Sport Min­istry's funds was spent as well as $.4 mil­lion which was un­ac­count­ed for.

The TTFA is prob­ing how to re­cov­er the funds, which were un­ac­count­ed for from a June trip to Ar­genti­na af­ter a TTFA staff mem­ber al­leged­ly asked for the mon­ey from Nis­si Tours and Trav­el when he had no au­thor­i­ty to do so. That was dis­closed by Tourism Min­is­ter Ger­ald Hadeed on Fri­day. Hadeed was re­ply­ing to an Op­po­si­tion ques­tion in Par­lia­ment.

He said the TTFA of­fi­cial, Dar­ren Mil­lien had al­leged­ly re­quest­ed the mon­ey from the trav­el agency which had been en­gaged to arrange for the pro­mo­tion trip to Ar­genti­na for a friend­ly foot­ball match with that coun­try.Hadeed said the ex­pen­di­ture as­so­ci­at­ed with the trip was $2.6 mil­lion, with the Tourism Min­istry staff's per-diem al­lowances cost­ing a to­tal of $22,059. He said the rev­enue re­ceived was $1.9 mil­lion.

Phillips said he chose not to com­ment fur­ther on the mat­ter un­til the po­lice presents their find­ings.On Au­gust 19, 2014, Phillips sent a Mem­o­ran­dum to the TTFA's Pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee, which the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained. It brought to Tim Kee's at­ten­tion a se­ries of con­cerns based up­on the at­tached re­port sub­mit­ted by Nis­si Trav­el in re­la­tion to their co­or­di­na­tion of our Ar­genti­na tour.

Phillips al­so in­clud­ed the gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ar­genti­na Tour Re­port that was sub­mit­ted to the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee.The claimed ex­pen­di­ture of $400,000 was nev­er an ap­proved ex­pense. "The TTFA does not have a li­cenc­ing fee struc­ture in place to jus­ti­fy an ex­pen­di­ture of $400,000. Fur­ther­more, and more trou­bling is that the claim of the al­leged pay­ment was de­scribed as a cash ex­pen­di­ture."

Copies of the al­leged re­ceipts of $200,000, a piece as shown on pages 15 and 16 of the Nis­si Tours and Trav­el Re­port, dis­play two dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent sig­na­tures and both sig­na­tures on the re­ceipt are acute­ly dif­fer­ent from the sig­na­ture of the in­di­vid­ual Nis­si Tours claims to have giv­en the $400,000 in cash.

"I would al­so like to point your at­ten­tion to page 17 of the Nis­si Re­port, the fo­lio for the Plaza Ho­tel. There is a con­sid­er­able dis­crep­an­cy on the to­tal amount pro­vid­ed on page 17 com­pared to the ex­pen­di­ture amount as iden­ti­fied on page 2, line 9. In ad­di­tion, the dates shown on the Plaza Ho­tel fo­lio re­flect a ho­tel stay from May 28 to June 6. The date of the Ar­genti­na was June 1-5.

"Based up­on my find­ings and dis­cus­sions, it ap­pears Nis­si Tours and Trav­el can­not jus­ti­fy their spend on a large por­tion of the funds they re­ceived from Min­istry of Tourism grant via the TTFA. As a re­sult, I rec­om­mend the sub­mis­sion of pre­sent­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion to the au­thor­i­ties for their re­view."

A let­ter was sent by Phillips on June 2, 2014, to Cavelle Reg­is George of Nis­si Tours in Mara­bel­la, re­gard­ing the TTFA's ap­pro­pri­a­tion of $2.1 mil­lion to Nis­si Tours. Phillips re­quest­ed an au­dit­ed re­port clear­ly ex­plain­ing how Nis­si Tours spent the funds sourced from the State as well as the funds re­alised and rec­og­nized from the pub­lic sale of the Ar­genti­na char­ter pack­ages.

Part of the let­ter read: "The TTFA as a third par­ty provider of ser­vices us­ing said funds, the need for an ac­cu­rate ac­count­ing of how those funds are be­ing ap­pro­pri­at­ed is of ut­most im­por­tance to our or­gan­i­sa­tion."

On Mon­day, the TTFA is­sued a re­lease which stat­ed: "The TTFA wish­es to clar­i­fy that at an emer­gency ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meet­ing called by TTFA Pres­i­dent Ray­mond Tim Kee on Sun­day, (No­vem­ber 30) the com­mit­tee agreed to ac­cept Dar­ren Mil­lien's of­fer to vol­un­tar­i­ly with­draw his ser­vices un­til the is­sues sur­round­ing the Ar­genti­na tour have been re­solved."