The war of words be­tween First Cit­i­zens Bank (FCB) and re­cent oust­ed ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) over con­trol of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's bank ac­count con­tin­ued on Wednes­day. 

The bat­tle, which has thus far been fought via a se­ries of strong­ly-word­ed le­gal let­ters sent be­tween at­tor­neys for both par­ties, re­sumed yes­ter­day as at­tor­ney Matthew Gayle, who is rep­re­sent­ing for­mer TTFA pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his ex­ec­u­tive team, sent a let­ter to FCB's at­tor­ney Kendell Alexan­der, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

In the let­ter, which was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, Gayle sought to re­spond to cor­re­spon­dence sent by Alexan­der on Mon­day (April 27). 

Gayle ques­tioned Alexan­der's de­ci­sion to men­tion the ex­ec­u­tive team's pend­ing pro­ceed­ings be­fore the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) over FI­FA's de­ci­sion to oust them and re­place them with a Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee chaired by busi­ness­man Robert Hadad on March 17. 

In his let­ter, Alexan­der stat­ed that the is­sue would be de­ter­mined af­ter the par­ties pro­vide court doc­u­ments over the res­o­lu­tion of the dis­pute be­tween par­ties. 

De­scrib­ing the claim as re­gret­table as it was al­leged­ly made with­out any re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on the on­go­ing dis­pute, Gayle said: "All that is rel­e­vant, so far as the re­la­tion­ship be­tween my client and yours, is that the TTFA has an es­tab­lished means of elect­ing its Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers, as well as an es­tab­lished means for those of­fi­cers to demit of­fice."

He main­tained that his clients were law­ful­ly elect­ed on No­vem­ber 24, last year, and had not demit­ted of­fice since. 

"Nowhere in my pre­vi­ous cor­re­spon­dence was there any ex­press ref­er­ence specif­i­cal­ly to this body or the pro­ceed­ings be­fore CAS, which are con­fi­den­tial ar­bi­tral pro­ceed­ings to which your client has no ac­cess to," Gayle said, as he ac­cused the bank of at­tempt­ing to be an in­for­mal ar­biter be­tween the par­ties.  

Stat­ing that FCB should have es­tab­lished poli­cies to de­ter­mine who prop­er­ly con­trols TTFA's ac­counts, Gayle stat­ed that there was no ba­sis to "le­git­i­mate­ly sur­mise that there has been a change in the sta­tus quo". 

"Your client, there­fore, would be in breach of its du­ties and oblig­a­tions to my client should, as your let­ter tends to sug­gest, my client's ex­ec­u­tive be pre­vent­ed in any way from ac­cess­ing and op­er­at­ing the ac­counts in the name of my client," Gayle said, as he com­pared the sit­u­a­tion to a hy­po­thet­i­cal one in­volv­ing al­low­ing an unau­tho­rised third par­ty ac­cess. 

Gayle al­so not­ed that his clients did not have ac­cess to its on­line bank­ing ser­vice as al­leged by Alexan­der and re­quest­ed that the fa­cil­i­ty be re­stored.  

Gayle gave the bank un­til 4 pm on Thurs­day to re­store un­fet­tered ac­cess to the ac­counts be­fore he files a law­suit on the is­sue. 

Guardian Me­dia Sports re­port­ed on Mon­day that since the dis­pute arose, FI­FA and CON­CA­CAF were ex­plor­ing op­tions to pro­vide fund­ing to the com­mit­tee to run the or­gan­i­sa­tion while avoid­ing lit­i­ga­tion. 

The source who spoke to us on Mon­day on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said that apart from the cur­rent le­gal wran­gle, FI­FA is al­so seek­ing to en­sure that fu­ture de­posits in­to the said ac­count are not at risk of any fu­ture gar­nishee or­der from the or­gan­i­sa­tion's nu­mer­ous cred­i­tors, as was done by for­mer TTFA tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor Kendal Walkes on Feb­ru­ary 11 to re­coup some of the over TT$5 mil­lion that is owed to him based on a court or­der in a wrong­ful dis­missal law­suit.