The com­pa­ny which sup­port­ed a Venezue­lan na­tion­al rep­re­sent­ing this coun­try in the Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in Viet­nam, yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted that the pub­lic back­lash sur­round­ing the woman’s crown­ing “neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed our cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship”.

Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed (SPL), in a state­ment, gave its side of the sto­ry af­ter 29-year-old Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no de­cid­ed to step down as Miss Grand T&T and re­lin­quish her crown.

Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, Mat­er­a­no and her at­tor­neys con­tend­ed that she on­ly re­cent­ly learned she had to fund her trip to the pageant in Viet­nam. How­ev­er, SPL yes­ter­day said it re­mained “res­olute” that Mat­er­a­no would rep­re­sent this coun­try in the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant tak­ing place on Oc­to­ber 25.

How­ev­er, the fran­chise hold­ers for Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al said they were “tru­ly shocked and dis­ap­point­ed” by her res­ig­na­tion.

SPL said when spon­sor­ship is­sues arose, they “en­gaged in dis­cus­sions with Mat­er­a­no’s man­age­ment”, and it was agreed she would al­so source her own spon­sors. It added that Mat­er­a­no al­so said she “comes with her own spon­sors”.

The pageant com­pa­ny added that all ex­pens­es for the del­e­gate’s stay in Viet­nam are cov­ered, in­clud­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion, trans­porta­tion, food and wardrobe, and an agree­ment was sent to Mat­er­a­no and her at­tor­neys to re­view.

“We wish to re­it­er­ate that we did not force Ms Mat­er­a­no to re­sign and this de­ci­sion was tak­en sole­ly by her. At no time did we on­ly re­cent­ly in­di­cate via What­sApp to Ms Mat­er­a­no’s man­ag­er that for her reign to con­tin­ue, she had to fund on her own, her trip to the Viet­nam pageant as well as oth­er in­ci­den­tals and if she failed to do so, it will re­sult in her reign be­ing “ter­mi­nat­ed” and her crown be­ing passed to the first run­ner up,” the com­pa­ny said.

On Sep­tem­ber 10, Mat­er­a­no, who has been re­sid­ing here for a few years, was crowned Miss Grand T&T.

How­ev­er, her win­ning the ti­tle and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent this coun­try in­ter­na­tion­al­ly sparked heat­ed de­bate across the coun­try. Many, in­clud­ing Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, ques­tioned why of­fi­cials seemed com­fort­able with a non-na­tion­al rep­re­sent­ing the coun­try on an in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

De­spite this, SPL said it was stand­ing with Mat­er­a­no, say­ing she was “a shin­ing ex­am­ple of what it meant to be a Tri­ni”.

Mean­while, Mat­er­a­no’s at­tor­neys said yes­ter­day they will not be com­ment­ing any fur­ther on the is­sue.