The South­ern Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (SFA) pres­i­dent and mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors of the then T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) Richard Quan Chan said that he will lead a charge for ac­tion to be tak­en against the mem­bers of the pre­vi­ous TTFA ad­min­is­tra­tion which FI­FA re­moved from of­fice in March.

Quan Chan has his eyes set on for­mer pres­i­dent William Wal­lace and his three vice pres­i­dents Clynt Tay­lor, Su­san Joseph-War­rick and Joseph Sam Phillip, as well as any­one else who may be found cul­pa­ble in the mis­man­age­ment of the em­bat­tled foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion, which led to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of a huge debt which FI­FA has es­ti­mat­ed as $50 mil­lion be­fore it sus­pend­ed the TTFA.  

Guardian Me­dia Sports was re­li­ably in­formed re­cent­ly that the amount had been in­creased by an­oth­er $700,000 for pay­ment of le­gal costs which was oc­curred when the TTFA chal­lenged FI­FA and lost in the T&T courts in Oc­to­ber.  

Ac­cord­ing to Quan Chan, he will be lob­by­ing the mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors to ap­proach the FI­FA-ap­point­ed Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee for an au­di­ence to dis­cuss the mis­steps of the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Apart from a failed con­tract with sports­wear gi­ants Nike just be­fore the be­gin­ning of their short tenure, the Wal­lace ad­min­is­tra­tion had been ac­cused of sign­ing con­tracts with na­tion­al coach Ter­ry Fen­wick, mar­ket­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive Pe­ter Miller, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han and oth­er deals such as the sign­ing of the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with UK ar­chi­tec­tur­al firm Laven­der, to trans­form the Ari­ma Velo­drome in­to a mul­ti­pur­pose com­plex, all which were done with­out the ap­proval of the board.

Quan Chan said: "One of my con­cern is when were those con­tracts signed be­cause up to when FI­FA ap­point­ed the nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee, I was not aware that any of the coach­es had signed con­tracts. So, I think it is im­por­tant that we look at those con­tracts, when they were signed and who signed them be­cause if they were signed af­ter the 17th of March, they are null and void. This is be­cause Wal­lace and they had no au­thor­i­ty to sign any­thing af­ter the 17th of March

"He added: "It is im­por­tant that we look at when they were signed be­cause, in the case of Fen­wick, Wal­lace said he signed the con­tract but he didn't read the con­tract be­cause the terms of that con­tract weren't agreed with by any­body but pos­si­bly Kei­th Look Loy and Fen­wick, and in some cas­es, it looks like Kei­th wasn't even aware of what it was, so I would like some­one to look at con­tracts when they were signed, who signed them etc be­fore we talk about ow­ing peo­ple."    

Quan Chan al­so said the Shel­don Phillips mat­ter for wrong­ful dis­missal which is sup­posed to be be­fore the courts could cost the as­so­ci­a­tion some $15 mil­lion, hint­ing that he does not be­lieve the cur­rent debt stems from le­git­i­mate con­tracts.

Un­der the Wal­lace-led ad­min­is­tra­tion which was elect­ed in­to of­fice on No­vem­ber 24 last year, the TTFA found it­self in a le­gal bat­tle with the sport's world gov­ern­ing body (FI­FA) af­ter FI­FA re­placed them with a nor­mal­i­sa­tion com­mit­tee on March 27, on the ba­sis that the sport had been on the brink of in­sol­ven­cy un­der it.

This led to a le­gal chal­lenge for the right to man­age the af­fairs of the sport which was il­le­gal­ly con­test­ed in the lo­cal courts, a vi­o­la­tion of the FI­FA Statutes. Due to this breach, FI­FA on Sep­tem­ber 24 sus­pend­ed the TTFA.

Quan Chan told Guardian Me­dia Sports that Wal­lace re­fused to an­swer ques­tions about the con­tracts, say­ing: "Hadad is the per­son now re­spon­si­ble for pay­ing bills, is he just go­ing to ac­cept that $700,000 as le­gal cost or would he seek the sup­port of peo­ple who were there be­fore? How can one meet Hadad and have a dis­cus­sion with him? Can we con­firm how much of the $60 mil­lion is a le­git­i­mate cost?"

He made it clear say­ing: "Once we find this out then we will know what ac­tions to take against the ad­min­is­tra­tion."