Ke­iron Ed­wards, pres­i­dent of the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) is ad­vis­ing the lo­cal foot­ball mem­ber­ship not to put their stamp of ap­proval on the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ment when it comes up for ap­proval at to­mor­row’s An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) at the Home of Foot­ball (HoF) from 8.30 am.

Ed­wards, in a let­ter, ad­dressed to the head of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee Robert Hadad on Sat­ur­day (Sep­tem­ber 17), ti­tled Re: Con­cerns re­gard­ing the Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ment for the years end­ed 31st De­cem­ber 2020 and 31st De­cem­ber 2021’, out­lined five main rea­sons for his con­cerns, name­ly Er­ro­neous Re­port­ing; Unau­tho­rised Re­moval of Fixed As­sets from the As­so­ci­a­tion; Pre­sen­ta­tion of Fi­nan­cial State­ment in an en­vi­ron­ment of bank­rupt­cy and in­sol­ven­cy pro­ceed­ings; Ne­glect­ed Dis­clo­sure Notes to the Fi­nan­cial State­ments; and In­creased Debt un­der the Nor­mal­iza­tion Com­mit­tee, which all stemmed from the au­dit­ed re­port of the TTFA au­di­tor AEGIS Build­ing So­lu­tions.

The east­ern foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion boss is call­ing on the TTFA to deal with the con­cerns first be­fore the au­dit­ed state­ment can be sent out to the mem­ber­ship for ap­proval.

Un­der the head­line of Er­ro­neous re­port­ing, Ed­wards said: “Ac­cord­ing to the Au­di­tor’s Re­port, AEGIS Build­ing So­lu­tions stat­ed, “We were un­able to de­ter­mine whether any ad­just­ments might have been found nec­es­sary in re­spect of record­ed and un­record­ed plant and equip­ment.” This was be­cause as­sets were not tagged and there was no prop­er record keep­ing of the fixed as­set reg­is­ter, which did not in­clude prop­er de­scrip­tions of as­sets.”

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, this means that the fig­ure stat­ed for fixed as­sets on the State­ment of Fi­nan­cial Po­si­tion of the Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments was in­cor­rect.

He lat­er ques­tioned- then how did the bal­ance sheet bal­ance? as it fur­ther sug­gests that there is a cor­re­spond­ing er­ror on the cred­it side of the fi­nan­cial state­ments re­ferred to as a com­pen­sat­ing er­ror. “It fur­ther sug­gests that there may be more er­ro­neous and un­re­al­is­tic fig­ures on the state­ment of com­pre­hen­sive in­come and the state­ment of cash flow as well,” Ed­wards not­ed.

“These fi­nan­cial state­ments, with the er­rors not­ed by the au­di­tor, brings in­to ques­tion the in­tegri­ty of the Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments for both years and it is not ad­vis­able for the mem­bers to sign them. The fi­nan­cial state­ments are now over­shad­owed by doubt re­gard­ing their ac­cu­ra­cy, un­der­stand­abil­i­ty and use­ful­ness and must be cor­rect­ed be­fore it is pre­sent­ed to the mem­bers.”

Ed­wards al­so ex­pressed par­tic­u­lar con­cern with the area of unau­tho­rised re­moval of fixed as­sets from the as­so­ci­a­tion, say­ing, “It ap­pears that some fixed as­sets were re­moved from the As­so­ci­a­tion with­out au­tho­riza­tion. As such, the fig­ures on the Bal­ance Sheet may be in­flat­ed. It is there­fore like­ly that there has been a ma­te­r­i­al amount of theft or fraud re­gard­ing the Fixed As­sets in the TTFA. In fact, the au­di­tors stat­ed that they were un­able to ver­i­fy as­sets be­cause some As­sets were tak­en off-site and not re­turned to the As­so­ci­a­tion.”

Ed­wards’ let­ter to Hadad on Sat­ur­day was ac­com­pa­nied by nine ques­tions seek­ing re­spons­es for if fixed as­sets were un­tagged, how then can the de­ter­mi­na­tion for Note 3 in the notes to the Fi­nan­cial State­ments and the charge for de­pre­ci­a­tion be deemed; What mea­sures have you put in place to en­sure prop­er record keep­ing; to how can fixed as­sets be re­moved from the premis­es with­out prop­er record keep­ing, among many oth­ers.

Ed­wards al­so point­ed to the area of Ne­glect­ed Dis­clo­sure Notes to the Fi­nan­cial State­ments, say­ing- “ In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dards (IFRS), re­quires that fi­nan­cial state­ments must be ac­com­pa­nied by dis­clo­sure notes, which as­sist users of the fi­nan­cial state­ments in un­der­stand­ing the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion of the en­ti­ty. How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing notes were not dis­closed in the As­so­ci­a­tion’s Au­dit­ed Fi­nan­cial State­ments for the years end­ed 31st De­cem­ber 2020 and 31st De­cem­ber 2021.

These notes, he said, were miss­ing for In­ven­to­ry un­der the sum­ma­ry of sig­nif­i­cant ac­count­ing; for of­fice equip­ment and com­put­er; the im­pair­ment of fixed as­sets; and for em­ploy­ee ben­e­fits, as it re­lates to va­ca­tion and pen­sion, among many oth­ers.

Ed­wards made it clear to Hadad and his mem­bers that as the man­ag­er of the as­so­ci­a­tion that they are re­spon­si­ble for safe­guard­ing the fixed as­sets of the as­so­ci­a­tion. “You are re­quired to be ac­count­able for the fund­ing giv­en to you by FI­FA and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T which you have failed to do. This il­lus­trates that you con­tin­ue to man­age the af­fairs of the as­so­ci­a­tion in a man­ner that is not fi­nan­cial­ly pru­dent and re­spon­si­ble,” Ed­wards said.

Ed­wards said he has not yet re­ceived a re­sponse from the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee and yes­ter­day Guardian Me­dia Sports al­so re­quest­ed a com­ment from Hadad on the con­cerns ex­pressed by Ed­wards but got no re­sponse.