Three days be­fore the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) holds an Emer­gency Gen­er­al Meet­ing (EGM) to treat with is­sues high­light­ed by its mem­bers in its au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for 2020/2021, comes con­fir­ma­tion from the sport's world gov­ern­ing body - FI­FA that it is sat­is­fied with the state­ment.

At an an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing (AGM) on Sep­tem­ber 21 at the con­tro­ver­sial Home of Foot­ball in Bal­main, Cou­va, Ke­iron Ed­wards, pres­i­dent of the East­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (EFA) re­ceived tremen­dous sup­port in de­lay­ing the ap­proval of the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials based on five main rea­sons, such as 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 Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, which all stemmed from the au­dit­ed re­port of the TTFA au­di­tor AEGIS So­lu­tions.

In the re­port, AEGIS con­firmed that they were un­able to de­ter­mine whether any ad­just­ments might have been found nec­es­sary in re­spect of record­ed and un­record­ed plant and equip­ment.

Ed­wards said be­cause of this, fig­ures quot­ed in the fi­nan­cial state­ment could not be val­i­dat­ed and con­vinced mem­bers at the Sep­tem­ber 21 AGM to have the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials dealt with at an EGM 17 days af­ter that meet­ing, which is card­ed for Sat­ur­day.

How­ev­er, a let­ter from FI­FA's Head of Fi­nan­cial Gov­er­nance & Over­sight Ser­vices Christo­pher Sup­piger on Sep­tem­ber 30 made it clear that fail­ure to present au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials by June 30 will re­sult in the re­stric­tion of fund­ing.

"It is im­por­tant to high­light that the FI­FA For­ward Reg­u­la­tions re­quire all mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions to sub­mit the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments ir­re­spec­tive of the opin­ion of the au­di­tor. How­ev­er, it is worth not­ing that even though the 2020 and 2021 fi­nan­cial state­ments had a qual­i­fied opin­ion, we con­sid­er the rea­son for qual­i­fy­ing the opin­ion im­ma­te­r­i­al and we are com­fort­able with the fi­nan­cial state­ments pre­sent­ed at the TTFA Gen­er­al As­sem­bly held on Sep­tem­ber 21st, 2022."

The let­ter al­so stat­ed: "Ac­cord­ing to ar­ti­cle 16 of the FI­FA For­ward Reg­u­la­tions, 'For each fi­nan­cial year, the FI­FA gen­er­al sec­re­tari­at shall con­duct a FI­FA cen­tral au­dit re­view of all mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions and con­fed­er­a­tions that have re­ceived For­ward 2.0 funds in the pre­vi­ous year'. There­fore, we would like to em­pha­size that the re­sults of the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 2021 Cen­tral Re­view con­duct­ed by in­de­pen­dent au­di­tors ap­point­ed by FI­FA, were pos­i­tive and in line with the FI­FA For­ward Reg­u­la­tions, hav­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions made joint­ly by FI­FA and the au­di­tors been ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed or cur­rent­ly un­der im­ple­men­ta­tion since the ap­point­ment of the Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee of the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA).

"We would like to make ref­er­ence to Ar­ti­cle 14 of the FI­FA For­ward Reg­u­la­tions, which states that all mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions must sub­mit an­nu­al­ly their au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and the signed min­utes of the mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­gress or gen­er­al as­sem­bly where these are pre­sent­ed and ap­proved by June 30th. Fail­ing to do so will re­sult in the re­stric­tion of fund­ing."

Yes­ter­day, Ed­wards re­fused to com­ment on the let­ter, say­ing he did not have the doc­u­ment from FI­FA be­fore him and would re­spond ac­cord­ing­ly.

Co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Head of Sport De­vel­op­ment at the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Justin Lat­apy-George, in a let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, re­spond­ed to an in­quiry by TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Amiel Mo­hammed about its au­dit­ed re­port.

Ac­cord­ing to Lat­apy-George: "Fur­ther to your in­quiry re the bold­ed and un­der­lined sub­ject above, this cor­re­spon­dence is to con­firm that the Board of Di­rec­tors of the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Ltd (SPORTT) re­mains com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies (NG­Bs) for sport with the pro­duc­tion of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­ports.

"This as­sis­tance is on the con­di­tion that the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­ports are pro­duced by an en­ti­ty/in­di­vid­ual that is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of T&T (ICATT) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dards (IFRS) for small-to-medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) is used to pro­duce this re­port.

"Au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­ports gen­er­at­ed con­sis­tent with the above cri­te­ria will be ac­cept­ed by SPORTT and recog­nised as ful­fill­ing the com­pli­ance re­quire­ment for the sub­mis­sion of such re­ports."

AEGIS co­in­ci­den­tal­ly al­so sub­mit­ted a four-page doc­u­ment on Sep­tem­ber 30 to con­firm that the au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment pre­sent­ed on Sep­tem­ber 21, was done ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.