RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed (SPL) has dis­tanced it­self from claims by for­mer Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive Milei­dy Mat­er­a­no and has promised to give a state­ment on the mat­ter to­day.

This fol­lows Mat­er­a­no’s an­nounce­ment on Thurs­day that she was step­ping down as this coun­try’s del­e­gate to the pageant in Viet­nam be­cause of spon­sor­ship is­sues.

“Our at­tor­neys are prepar­ing a state­ment on what was said. The ac­cu­sa­tions they were mak­ing were in­ac­cu­rate. The new del­e­gate, Re­bekah, the com­pa­ny will be spon­sor­ing her trip, her tick­ets and ac­com­mo­da­tion, which in fact is al­ready paid for.

“The on­ly thing we were seek­ing spon­sor­ship for was the air­line tick­et. Every­thing else in terms of ac­com­mo­da­tion, food those things are al­ready paid for for the del­e­gate so the claims they are mak­ing are very in­ac­cu­rate,” SPL’s head of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions, Ker­ry Gob­erd­han, said yes­ter­day.

Gob­erd­han said the com­pa­ny is spon­sor­ing first run­ner-up Re­bekah His­lop who will rep­re­sent T&T at the [pageant next month.

How­ev­er, Mat­er­a­no’s man­ag­er, Charisse Par­sons, main­tains that SPL was not trans­par­ent with the Venezuela-born beau­ty queen, as she was told she would have to fund the na­tion­al cos­tume, evening dress and the air­fare, among oth­er things.

“We would al­so like to re­it­er­ate that fur­ther to those items list­ed she was specif­i­cal­ly told that the crown would be con­veyed to the first run­ner-up if fund­ing was not pro­vid­ed specif­i­cal­ly to Stolen Pro­duc­tions Lim­it­ed,” Par­sons said.

There was pub­lic out­rage over the crown­ing of Mat­er­a­no as Miss Grand In­ter­na­tion­al T&T a few weeks ago, with some ques­tion­ing her el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent this coun­try as she is not a cit­i­zen of T&T.

How­ev­er, at a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day her at­tor­neys, Lemuel Mur­phy, Tama­ra Gre­goiro and Wayne Sturge, said Mat­er­a­no’s de­ci­sion to step down “was in no way in­flu­enced by any oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions.”