Michael Awai, an of­fi­cial of the AC Port-of-Spain, says the move by the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee (NC) of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) to ap­point Maria Daniel, a Li­censed Trustee, to man­age the debt pro­pos­al process which will be guid­ed by the rules of the Bank­rupt­cy and In­sol­ven­cy Act, Chap­ter 9:70, is a good one.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTFA re­lease on Mon­day and an Ernst & Young re­port, dat­ed April 9, 2021, which put the TTFA’s to­tal out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties and unassert­ed claims (con­tin­gent li­a­bil­i­ties) at ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$98.5 mil­lion.

The re­lease out­lined the process which will in­clude meet­ings with and the sub­mis­sion of claims (and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments) by all cred­i­tors; a re­view and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the claims; and the de­vel­op­ment of a pro­pos­al to deal with the valid out­stand­ing li­a­bil­i­ties.

Once the pro­pos­al has been de­vel­oped and ap­proved by the cred­i­tors, it will be sanc­tioned by the Courts and the NC, head­ed by chair­man Robert Hadad, will pro­ceed to im­ple­ment the pro­pos­al fol­low­ing its terms.

Dur­ing the de­vel­op­ment of the pro­pos­al and its im­ple­men­ta­tion, the NC’s day-to-day man­age­ment of the TTFA will be un­af­fect­ed.

Com­ment­ing on Daniel’s ap­point­ment, Awai told Guardian Me­dia Sports that Daniel will be com­ing in as the re­ceiv­er of­fi­cial­ly so that she will go through with the cred­i­tors the con­tin­gent li­a­bil­i­ties and de­ter­mine the re­al bal­ances owed by the TTFA and the ones that are in doubt and come to a de­ci­sion by tak­ing it to the Court and get a rul­ing from the Court to es­tab­lish what is the true bal­ance owed by the TTFA.

He added, “I think it is very strate­gic be­cause they (NC) don’t seem to have a plan as yet or maybe they do have one and they are not shar­ing it on how they are go­ing to re­pay TT$98.5 mil­lion."

Awai said the process of hir­ing a Trustee was al­ways open to the NC and all in­volved would have known about it and as they were then try­ing to get the sup­port of the mem­ber­ship.

He said: "Be­cause you can un­der­stand that if the ac­counts were not passed they would not have got­ten any mon­ey to con­tin­ue pay­ing peo­ple salaries, coach­es and peo­ple in the ad­min­is­tra­tion and so on, and I think that was key to the ac­counts be­ing passed.”

Ques­tioned as to whether the to­tal val­ue of TTFA’s as­set which in­cludes the Home of Foot­ball (HoF) and acres of land val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $75 mil­lion could be used to set­tle with its cred­i­tors to which Hadad said an in­de­pen­dent third-par­ty val­u­a­tion is to be con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine that fig­ure and at this stage, all op­tions are on the ta­ble in­clud­ing the sale of the HoF.

Awai said the plans be­ing put for­ward by the NC seems a sort of sell or lease and buy back, or sell and lease sit­u­a­tion when it comes to the HoF.

He added, “I think they (NC) like to talk the worse things and then they give you what the re­al thing is. They are very strate­gic in their in­for­ma­tion and the time of their re­leas­es and I am not at all ex­cit­ed nor scared about what they are do­ing, but I think they are on the right path. They have tak­en their time and I think the move has kicked the can down the road for an­oth­er six months in or­der where they can get more in­for­ma­tion via the court who will es­tab­lish all the bal­ances that need to be es­tab­lished."

He con­tin­ued: “And I think in six months they will come to the end of the tenure of the NC and they may have an ex­ten­sion so they can reg­u­larise and iden­ti­fy and deal with the bal­ances through the court by the TTFA and sec­ond­ly by the time they should have in place a plan to deal with the re­pay­ment of the debt."

How­ev­er, Awai was up­beat that the HoF would re­main un­der the own­er­ship of the lo­cal fed­er­a­tion say­ing, “I don’t be­lieve, how­ev­er, that we will sell the HoF as I don’t think it is theirs to sell be­cause it is not a pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness. It’s an or­gan­i­sa­tion and I don’t be­lieve the gov­ern­ment will al­low them to sell it to be quite frank."

He said hav­ing been in charge of foot­ball for close to two years now the gen­er­at­ing of funds by the NC to help the fi­nan­cial­ly strained body is all down to tim­ing more than any­thing else.

He ex­plained: “They are try­ing to deal with the thing that will bury the TTFA, they are try­ing to es­tab­lish the debt and when that is done the mon­ey that will come or the fund­ing of US$1.5 mil­lion per an­num from the FI­FA they will be able to use that to help the na­tion­al teams with­out hav­ing to be scared about any­body who may be tak­ing the mon­ey in the bank when the mon­ey goes to the bank, par­tic­u­lar­ly the peo­ple who have the ex­e­cu­tions over the judg­ment debt.

"Af­ter that is done the whole ques­tion of the HoF will al­low the TTFA to breathe a lit­tle eas­i­er at least for six months to be able to fi­nance the na­tion­al teams go­ing for­ward, and once they put a plan in place I be­lieve on­ly then that the busi­ness­men will start to lis­ten to the TTFA via Robert Hadad.

"It’s pure­ly a mat­ter of tim­ing and so long as the tim­ing is al­right and it is syn­chro­nized prop­er­ly, I be­lieve it’s a whole na­tion­al ef­fort to get the foot­ball go­ing for­ward."

How­ev­er, Awai warned that if the NC was to shut down the TTFA and start a new one in 2022 he doesn’t think any­one will deal with them.

He said: “So in the next six months, I think they can bring in a mar­ket­ing per­son to deal with not so much so of try­ing to pay the debt but to see how they can pro­mote and mar­ket the HoF and there is a space just west of the sta­di­um where they have con­certs and par­ties and I think that is where they might be look­ing to see as part of the arrange­ment on how they can de­vel­op a sort of fund­ing for foot­ball in gen­er­al.”