The ap­peal hear­ing in­to the half-a-mil­lion dol­lars that is al­leged­ly miss­ing from the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB) will start on Tues­day with the for­mer trea­sur­er, Char­tered ac­coun­tant Kiswah Chaitoo, fac­ing the Supreme Ap­pel­late Com­mit­tee of the TTCB.

The TTCB called a vote of no con­fi­dence in Chaitoo dur­ing a spe­cial gen­er­al meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2024, and the mo­tion was car­ried 35-12 af­ter the trea­sur­er re­vealed in De­cem­ber 2023 that ap­prox­i­mate­ly $500,000 was al­leged­ly mis­used over five years.

The mo­tion signed and put for­ward by sev­er­al mem­bers of the TTCB ac­cused Chaitoo of hav­ing com­mit­ted four breach­es ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cles 25 and 27 of the TTCB con­sti­tu­tion:

1. Procur­ing doc­u­ments of the TTCB and keep­ing same in his pos­ses­sion with­out the au­tho­ri­sa­tion of the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive.

2. Mak­ing a re­port to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice with­out the knowl­edge/ap­proval of the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive while an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion was be­ing con­duct­ed by the TTCB in­to said al­le­ga­tions.

3. In­ten­tion­al­ly mak­ing state­ments to the me­dia and at an An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing that are known to be un­true.

4. Re­fus­ing to at­tend a meet­ing of the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive called to in­quire in­to mat­ters of con­cern to the Board that arose from the con­duct of Mr Kiswah Chaitoo.

Chaitoo ap­pealed the Board’s no-con­fi­dence mo­tion be­tween March 5-10, via his at­tor­neys Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Ste­fan Ramkissoon, a 14-page no­tice to the Supreme Ap­pel­late Com­mit­tee which is led by Jus­tice Prakash Moo­sai (Chair­man), and com­pris­es Nor­ris Fer­gu­son, Am­mar Sama­roo, Samuel Saun­ders, Ren­nie Go­sine, Kent Chisayawan and Pat­sy Joseph.

Chaitoor’s sanc­tion has al­so caught the at­ten­tion of for­mer West In­dies fast-bowler turned com­men­ta­tor, Michael Hold­ing, who, in a vir­tu­al ad­dress on the first day (April 25) of the Cari­com Crick­et con­fer­ence, used the mat­ter as one ex­am­ple of the un­ac­cept­able gov­er­nance prac­tices ex­ist­ing with­in re­gion­al boards and by ex­ten­sion Crick­et West In­dies. Chaitoo’s hear­ing is ex­pect­ed to con­clude to­mor­row.

Last week Wednes­day, the Cen­tral Zone Crick­et Coun­cil of the TTCB is­sued a state­ment which reads: “The per­va­sive al­le­ga­tions of lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy with­in the TTCB re­mains a grave con­cern for all stake­hold­ers com­mit­ted to pri­or­i­tiz­ing the in­tegri­ty of the sport, in­clud­ing the Cen­tral Zon­al Coun­cil. Re­gret­tably, the TTCB emerged as a fo­cal point dur­ing the dis­cus­sions, not for its com­mend­able en­deav­ours, but rather due to dis­con­cert­ing rev­e­la­tions that re­ver­ber­at­ed across the globe via so­cial me­dia chan­nels. The heart­felt pre­sen­ta­tion by Michael Hold­ing, a crick­et­ing leg­end, un­der­scored a long­stand­ing is­sue that has cap­tured sus­tained at­ten­tion from the me­dia and key stake­hold­ers: the mis­han­dling of funds, with more than $500,000 re­port­ed miss­ing from the TTCB cof­fers by the Trea­sur­er, who brave­ly re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Po­lice, fol­lowed by his ill-ad­vised and un­for­tu­nate re­moval. We await the much-an­tic­i­pat­ed rul­ing of the Tri­bunal, as it will have a pro­found im­pact in pro­tect­ing the in­tegri­ty and in­ter­ests of the wider crick­et­ing com­mu­ni­ty es­pe­cial­ly those who are re­spon­si­ble for speak­ing out and speak­ing the truth.”

Mean­while, on Wednes­day 17th April Bas­sarath, told re­porters that the find­ings of the for­mer trea­sur­er Chaitoo and his re­port to the TT Po­lice Ser­vice Fraud Squad have af­fect­ed the TTCB as it has lost all its spon­sors.

How­ev­er, via a let­ter dat­ed April 30 from the North Zone Crick­et Coun­cil and signed by its chair­man Win­ston Sobers it states: “Hav­ing re­gard to the above, we wish to point out the facts re­gard­ing the with­draw­al of spon­sor­ship of the TTCB in­clud­ing youth crick­et so that the un­sus­pect­ing pub­lic will be aware of the facts so that the mis­in­for­ma­tion be­ing ped­dled will have lit­tle ef­fect. The Board over the years has had sev­er­al long­stand­ing spon­sors and af­ter in­de­pen­dent au­dits were done and the find­ings brought for­ward, which were so se­ri­ous that the spon­sors had no choice but to with­draw their spon­sor­ship im­me­di­ate­ly from the TTCB.”

The let­ter con­tin­ued: “The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny had spon­sor­ship with the TTCB worth close to $15 mil­lion, in which $2.98 mil­lion was dis­cov­ered to be mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed and was asked to be paid back af­ter an in­de­pen­dent au­dit was done. This re­sult­ed in a Court judg­ment in which the Judge ruled that a foren­sic au­dit should be im­me­di­ate­ly done giv­en the se­ri­ous­ness of the find­ings of the Au­dit. In­stead, the Ex­ec­u­tive of the TTCB uni­lat­er­al­ly re­fused to do any foren­sic au­dit and in­stead ap­pealed the mat­ter which is now be­fore the Court of Ap­peal. Fur­ther­more, Shell a long-stand­ing spon­sor of TTCB youth crick­et al­so con­duct­ed an in­de­pen­dent au­dit and af­ter com­ple­tion with­drew their spon­sor­ship af­ter al­most 20 years. They would have con­tributed over $40 mil­lion and be­cause of the find­ings of the in­de­pen­dent au­dit re­port, they im­me­di­ate­ly de­cid­ed to cut all ties with TTCB and any of its af­fil­i­ates. Such ac­tion, Mr. Pres­i­dent is not the fault of an hon­est ac­coun­tant mak­ing his find­ings known to the Po­lice; you are the one who must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it. To date, the TTCB has over the last 5 years re­ceived close to 100 mil­lion dol­lars with close to $50 mil­lion of this mon­ey com­ing from the SPORTT, Min­istry of Sport, and the Sports and Cul­ture Fund from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and it is a high­ly trans­par­ent at­tempt by you Mr. Bas­sarath in blam­ing Mr. Chaitoo for the loss of spon­sor­ship.”

When con­tact­ed via What­sApp for a re­sponse Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath wrote: “I want Mr Sobers to stop plac­ing his sig­na­ture to so much false in­for­ma­tion that was writ­ten by some­one else.”

The North Zone Crick­et Coun­cil and Richard Ramkissoon, who is one of the Na­tion­al League club’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the own­er of Cen­tral Sports Crick­et Club have al­so ac­cused the TTCB pres­i­dent of breach­ing the TTCB con­sti­tu­tion via let­ters dat­ed April 17, 2024.