Mark Bas­sant

Lead Ed­i­tor, In­ves­tiga­tive

With the help of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors, Guardian Me­dia un­rav­elled a fi­nan­cial trail lead­ing to a Pana­man­ian bank ac­count which seems to have been opened by for­mer T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent David John-Williams in April 2017.

Us­ing an email ad­dress used by John-Williams for many years, foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­duct­ed a le­gal da­ta an­a­lyt­ic trace.

The email ad­dress al­lowed the in­ves­ti­ga­tors to pin down com­mu­ni­ca­tion with any bank in their data­base, in­clud­ing any bank in Pana­ma or else­where in the world.

Their search flagged an ac­count with a Pana­man­ian bank called BPR Bank, SA.

Lo­cat­ed in the fi­nan­cial dis­trict of Pana­ma City, the bank on­ly start­ed op­er­at­ing in Pana­ma in 2016.

Do­ing a deep dive with per­son­al in­for­ma­tion about John-Williams pro­vid­ed by Guardian Me­dia, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed that, “We have rea­son to be­lieve that Mr David John-Williams is in pos­ses­sion, and or as­so­ci­at­ed, with a bank ac­count at this bank which has in ex­cess of US$1.5 mil­lion.”

On April 1, 2017, the bank ac­count was cre­at­ed and on the same day US$279,742.62 was de­posit­ed in­to it via a pay­ment or­der, ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion the in­ves­ti­ga­tors ob­tained.

This is bear­ing in mind that at some point in ear­ly 2017, FI­FA gave the TTFA US$2 mil­lion in fund­ing for the Home of Foot­ball project in Cou­va. At the same time, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nances were in se­ri­ous de­cline.

On Au­gust 15, 2017, an­oth­er pay­ment or­der of US$249,640.20 was de­posit­ed in­to the BPR ac­count. In four months, a to­tal of US$529,382.82 was de­posit­ed in­to the ac­count. Some­time in 2018, the foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors said, US$1 mil­lion was al­so de­posit­ed in­to the ac­count in one trans­ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained in­for­ma­tion about two Pana­man­ian com­pa­nies, SOREG INC. and COL­SOL In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, in which John-Williams ap­peared as a di­rec­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors, the de­posits in the BPR bank ac­count came from those two com­pa­nies.

Ac­cord­ing to Pana­ma’s pub­lic reg­istry, SOREG INC was formed in 1975 and COL­SOL In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion in 1977.

Foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors and an­oth­er re­li­able source ver­i­fy­ing the in­for­ma­tion said both com­pa­nies are de­funct - SOREG dis­solved and COL­SOL In­vest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion was sus­pend­ed.

Some­one named David Apoll­naris John-Williams, the same name as the TTFA’s for­mer pres­i­dent, is list­ed as a di­rec­tor and sec­re­tary in these com­pa­nies, ac­cord­ing to foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Why? Be­cause they said it like­ly made it eas­i­er for John-Williams to open an ac­count with BPR Bank SA, since his name was list­ed on the Pana­man­ian com­pa­nies.

What the foren­sic ex­perts con­clud­ed in their re­port to Guardian Me­dia was that if COL­SOL In­vest­ment and SOREG were used for the trans­ac­tions to the BPR ac­count “a pred­i­ca­tion of an off-the-shelf off­shore scheme may ex­ist.”

Usu­al­ly reg­is­tered through a com­pa­ny for­ma­tion agent be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the cus­tomer, an off-the-shelf com­pa­ny, or ready-made com­pa­ny, is a pre-reg­is­tered lim­it­ed com­pa­ny that was nev­er trad­ed.

What this means, ac­cord­ing to in­ves­ti­ga­tors is that COL­SOL and SOREG were like­ly used as a con­duit to fa­cil­i­tate the trans­fer of the mon­ey in­to the BPR bank ac­count in Pana­ma, al­leged­ly owned by John-Williams.

“Foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tors es­tab­lished you opened the ac­count in ear­ly April 2017 and then made a de­posit through a pay­ment or­der to the ac­count for US$279,000, and then on Au­gust 18th, an­oth­er pay­ment or­der de­posit­ed US$249,000,” Guardian Me­dia asked to John-Williams near his home at the Sevil­la Golf Course, in Brechin Cas­tle, Cou­va on Tues­day (Sep­tem­ber 8).

“To my bank ac­count? ... It’s laugh­able. I hope you can pro­duce the ev­i­dence,” John-Williams said in re­sponse.

“Dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions they dis­cov­ered the mon­ey came from two com­pa­nies - SOREG In­cor­po­ra­tion and COL­SOL In­vest­ment, where they said you were list­ed as a di­rec­tor and sec­re­tary, and it seems the mon­ey came from an ac­count with these busi­ness names that were de­funct. They al­leged you in­sert­ed your name in­to these com­pa­nies and lat­er trans­ferred the funds to the bank ac­count you set up. Whose mon­ey is that?” Guardian Me­dia then asked.

He laughed.

Fi­nal­ly, we asked John-Williams, “Why did you de­cide to open an ac­count in 2017 in Pana­ma?”

Once again, he laughed.

Hid­den loan and
sec­ond tranche

When the new­ly-elect­ed TTFA board as­sumed of­fice in No­vem­ber 2019, then-pres­i­dent William Wal­lace asked FI­FA’s Chief Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions Of­fi­cer about FI­FA’s For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme fund­ing for the pe­ri­od 2019-2022.

But FI­FA’s Veron Os­em­bo-Om­ba failed to in­form Wal­lace that for­mer pres­i­dent David John-Williams had al­ready re­ceived the fund­ing in Jan­u­ary 2019, well ahead of time.

That mon­ey re­mains un­ac­count­ed for.

Al­so un­ac­count­ed for is a CON­CA­CAF loan that John-Williams was grant­ed in May 2017.

Like the sec­ond tranche of fund­ing, no one knew that John-Williams re­ceived the CON­CA­CAF loan. The loan, un­known to the then TTFA board, came a month af­ter the Pana­ma bank ac­count was opened.

It al­so came on­ly a few months af­ter FI­FA gave the TTFA US$2 mil­lion of For­ward Fund­ing mon­ey and ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1.2m in an­nu­al op­er­a­tional costs - US$700,000 in Jan­u­ary and US$500,000 by Ju­ly of that year.

The CON­CA­CAF promis­so­ry note, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, showed the sig­na­tures of CON­CA­CAF Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Phillipe Mog­gio and John-Williams as the loan’s bor­row­er.

The loan’s agree­ment stat­ed: “The use of pro­ceeds of the amounts bor­rowed here­un­der shall be sole­ly for ad­min­is­tra­tive, tech­ni­cal and op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es of the bor­row­er (TTFA), in­clud­ing prepa­ra­tion and trav­el of the bor­row­er’s na­tion­al teams to of­fi­cial CON­CA­CAF or FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions and which have been pre-ap­proved in writ­ing by the lender. None of the pro­ceeds will be used for any oth­er pur­pos­es.”

As part of the agree­ment, TTFA had a ma­tu­ri­ty date of 30 days to re­pay the amount, or as stip­u­lat­ed, af­ter this date, in­ter­est was to be ac­crued an­nu­al­ly.

Three years lat­er, this loan has not been re­paid, with the in­ter­est send­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion in­to deep­er debt.

In De­cem­ber 2019, just a few months be­fore a FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee re­placed the TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der Wal­lace, CON­CA­CAF’s Chief Fi­nan­cial and Ad­min­is­tra­tion Of­fi­cer Ale­jan­dro Lesende wrote to Yale An­toine (TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cer) in­di­cat­ing the out­stand­ing debt from 2017, with in­ter­est, stood at US$662,988.04.

Giv­en the TTFA’s al­ready pre­car­i­ous fi­nances, Lesende was re­luc­tant in lend­ing the mon­ey, ac­cord­ing to CON­CA­CAF in­sid­ers. How­ev­er, he de­cid­ed to grant the loan on the con­di­tion that it was to pay off peo­ple owed mon­ey by the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Guardian Me­dia ob­tained a break­down of the par­ties who re­ceived par­tial pay­ments:

Ex-na­tion­al man­ag­er Stephen Hart re­ceived US$70,000 for 2016.

For­mer na­tion­al man­ag­er Den­nis Lawrence was paid US$20,000.

Out of the mon­ey orig­i­nal­ly as­signed to Lawrence, how­ev­er, some was paid to tech­ni­cal staff and a few na­tion­al play­ers for a por­tion of their match fees.

Ac­cord­ing to TTFA and CON­CA­CAF in­sid­ers, most of the loan in­tend­ed for op­er­a­tional use was di­vert­ed to the Home of Foot­ball project in­stead, leav­ing cred­i­tors in a quandary.

Asked why he de­cid­ed to take out the CON­CA­CAF loan, John-Williams de­clined to com­ment.

“Did you short change Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball and the peo­ple of this na­tion, Mr Williams?” Guardian Me­dia then asked.

He again de­clined com­ment.

When the last TTFA board came in­to of­fice in late No­vem­ber 2019, they at­tempt­ed to dig in­to the fi­nan­cial deal­ings that oc­curred dur­ing John-Williams’ tenure.

On Feb­ru­ary 2, 2020, Wal­lace wrote to FI­FA’s Chief Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion Of­fi­cer Veron Mosen­go-Om­ba in­quir­ing about the FI­FA For­ward Fund­ing for 2019-2022.

Dis­mis­sive­ly, Mosen­go-Om­ba re­spond­ed say­ing, “We are aware of the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and ex­ist­ing debts of the TTFA. How­ev­er, in or­der to have a holis­tic view of the fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion of the TTFA, we will send a joint mis­sion of FI­FA-CON­CA­CAF which will be com­prised of fi­nan­cial ex­perts to work with the FA, so that we can have clar­i­ty, and to work with you for the next move. In the mean­time, we can on­ly re­lease fund­ing di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to com­pe­ti­tion/tour­na­ment prepa­ra­tion, as we have been do­ing so far.”

But when Guardian Me­dia pre­vi­ous­ly spoke to John-Williams for an­oth­er sto­ry in May this year, he sent us a let­ter from FI­FA signed by Mosen­go-Om­ba out­lin­ing that FI­FA was pleased to an­nounce their en­ti­tle­ments un­der the FI­FA For­ward Pro­gramme for $2m for the years 2019-2022 - a sec­ond tranche that was giv­en in an elec­tion year when a new TTFA pres­i­dent (Wal­lace) was lat­er cho­sen.

In oth­er words, John-Williams re­ceived two tranch­es of FI­FA For­ward Pro­gramme mon­ey in 2017 and 2019. Usu­al­ly, monies are giv­en un­der this pro­gramme every four years. The ques­tion re­mained why Mosen­go-Om­ba failed to tell Wal­lace, in his let­ter in Feb­ru­ary this year, that the FI­FA For­ward Pro­gramme for the next four years had al­ready been dis­bursed in Jan­u­ary 2019?

One month lat­er, in March, a FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee un­der Robert Hadad took con­trol from the Wal­lace-led TTFA board.

There re­main a few ques­tions about the deal­ings be­tween the John-Williams board and mem­bers of the FI­FA ex­ec­u­tive.

Last Oc­to­ber, in an in­ter­view with UK jour­nal­ist Paul Nichol­son, then TTFA mem­ber Sel­by Browne hint­ed that should John-Williams lose the TTFA elec­tion, FI­FA would re­move the new board and in­stall a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee.

Was the FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee a way to cov­er up trans­gres­sions com­mit­ted dur­ing the reign of John-Williams?

With FI­FA’s Con­gress due on Sep­tem­ber 18 and the TTFA fac­ing pos­si­ble sanc­tions for tak­ing the cur­rent dis­pute over the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee to court, will FI­FA probe al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion, or rather will T&T foot­ball face its dark­est mo­ment with­out the full truth com­ing to light?

Time will tell.

With re­port­ing by
Joshua Seemu­n­gal