Guardian Me­dia Sports con­tin­ues its se­ries in­to the fi­nan­cial con­cerns and re­la­tion­ships be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB), its fran­chise com­pa­ny Red Force Crick­et T&T Lim­it­ed and the lev­el of fund­ing pumped in­to each oth­er by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) and fees paid af­ter this re­porter viewed sev­er­al doc­u­ments and spoke to sev­er­al per­sons.

Sev­er­al ‘con­cerned’ TTCB sources are call­ing for a foren­sic ac­count­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fi­nan­cial state­ments of the TTCB and Red Force Crick­et T&T Lim­it­ed (the TTCB’s fran­chise com­pa­ny), cit­ing con­cerns about the busi­ness re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two re­lat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Red Force Crick­et T&T Lim­it­ed was formed as a for-prof­it com­pa­ny by the TTCB ex­ec­u­tive in 2014.

They want the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be­gin with the 2024 fi­nan­cial state­ments be­cause they are ‘alarmed’ by a $4.8 mil­lion pay­ment made to the TTCB by its sub­sidiary, Red Force Crick­et T&T Lim­it­ed, for ‘man­age­ment fees’.

They said that while the TTCB, as the na­tion­al crick­et au­thor­i­ty, over­sees the Red Force team, the board has nev­er been in the busi­ness of pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment ser­vices.

TTCB’s 2024 fi­nan­cial state­ments list­ed the pay­ment as a source of ad­min­is­tra­tion in­come.

In 2024 the man­age­ment fees in­creased by more than 300 per cent from 2023, which was $1.2 mil­lion.

The 2024 man­age­ment fee ac­count­ed for more board in­come than spon­sor­ship for lo­cal com­pe­ti­tions ($3.7 mil­lion), as well as mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions ($1.48 mil­lion).

Ac­cord­ing to Unit­ed King­dom-based on­line le­gal firm Sprint­law UK, “Man­age­ment fees, in the con­text of a crick­et fran­chise, are the re­cur­ring or one-time pay­ments made by the fran­chise own­er to the or­gan­is­ing body (like the Board of Con­trol of Crick­et In­dia in the case of the IPL) for the rights to op­er­ate the team, of­ten in­clud­ing on­go­ing sup­port and brand­ing. These fees can be a fixed amount or a per­cent­age of the fran­chise’s rev­enue.”

Guardian Me­dia Sports viewed the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion’s fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2023. There was no equiv­a­lent in­come for man­age­ment fees for its first-class fran­chise team, the Bar­ba­dos Pride.

The au­dit state­ments for the oth­er CWI as­so­ci­a­tions with fran­chise teams were not ac­ces­si­ble.

When con­tact­ed, TTCB Trea­sur­er Stephen Ramkissoon said he had no com­ment on the mat­ter, while TTCB Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Altaf Baksh said he would pre­fer not to com­ment, as TTCB Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath usu­al­ly han­dled is­sues of this na­ture.

Bas­sarath did not re­spond to ques­tions sent to him via What­sApp and email, and calls were al­so not an­swered.

Guardian Me­dia Sport un­der­stands, from TTCB sources who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, that dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s an­nu­al quar­ter­ly board meet­ing, the board’s mem­bers were banned from dis­cussing or ask­ing ques­tions about the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice raid which took place on May 8th.

The sources told Guardian Me­dia Sport that they were puz­zled and wor­ried be­cause, as far as they know, the po­lice could be vis­it­ing them any­time soon.

The sources al­so com­plained that de­spite the vast amounts of mon­ey re­ceived by the TTCB from the gov­ern­ment and CWI, many lo­cal crick­et­ing zones, re­spon­si­ble for grass­roots de­vel­op­ment, do not re­ceive any di­rect fund­ing from the TTCB.

Last week­end, in the days fol­low­ing the TTPS raid of the board’s of­fices, Bas­sarath, a CWI Vice Pres­i­dent, told Guardian Me­dia Sports he sees no rea­son for him­self or any mem­ber of staff to re­sign. He de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

Mean­while, on Sat­ur­day, when con­tact­ed, Chris Dehring, the re­cent­ly ap­point­ed chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of CWI, said he was un­able to speak about spe­cif­ic dis­burse­ments or au­dit sub­mis­sions at this time.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s men and women na­tion­al crick­et teams com­pete in the West In­dies Cham­pi­onship, a re­gion­al four-day com­pe­ti­tion, and the Re­gion­al Su­per50 un­der the fran­chise ‘Red Force Crick­et’.

The fran­chise al­so hosts lo­cal se­nior and youth com­pe­ti­tions.

Apart from the TTCB re­ceiv­ing $29 mil­lion for op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es and tour/tour­na­ment spend­ing from the CWI be­tween 2021 and 2024, the re­gion­al board al­so fund­ed Red Force.

Be­tween 2022 and 2024, ac­cord­ing to CWI au­dit state­ments for those years, Red Force re­ceived TT$25 mil­lion for tours and tour­na­ment spend­ing, as well as op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es.

In 2024, it re­ceived $14 mil­lion; in 2013, $9.7 mil­lion; and in 2022, $1.5 mil­lion.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the Red Force re­ceived more fund­ing than the Bar­ba­dos Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion ($19 mil­lion), the An­tigua Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion ($16.7 mil­lion) and the Ja­maica Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion ($11 mil­lion).

Red Force al­so re­ceived more than the crick­et fran­chis­es of Bar­ba­dos/Bar­ba­dos Pride ($14.6 mil­lion), the Ja­maica Crick­et Fran­chise De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny ($7 mil­lion), the Lee­ward De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny ($7.8 mil­lion) and Wind­ward Crick­et Inc. ($9.2 mil­lion).

Trans­ac­tions be­tween the TTCB and Red Force are re­ferred to as ‘re­lat­ed par­ty trans­ac­tions’.

“Par­ties are con­sid­ered to be re­lat­ed if one par­ty has the abil­i­ty to con­trol the oth­er par­ty or ex­er­cise sig­nif­i­cant in­flu­ence over the oth­er par­ty in mak­ing fi­nan­cial or op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions,” the TTCB au­dit states.

In 2014, TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath formed a new com­pa­ny to run the af­fairs of Trinidad and To­ba­go crick­et un­der a re­gion­al first-class fran­chise sys­tem in­tro­duced by the CWI.

TTCB sources have ques­tioned the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny, Red Force T&T Lim­it­ed.

They had ques­tions about the de­ci­sion-mak­ing re­gard­ing the com­pa­ny’s fi­nances.

“Who are the di­rec­tors? Who makes the fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions? When are meet­ings held?” Were some of the ques­tions the sources asked?’

The com­pa­ny’s reg­is­tered ad­dress is the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Cou­va – the head­quar­ters of the TTCB.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the board’s ac­counts were al­so con­cerned about an­oth­er $2.25 mil­lion fig­ure men­tioned in Sec­tion 18 of the 2024 au­dit­ed state­ments.

“As of Ju­ly 31, 2024, there was a pri­or year ad­just­ment in ac­cor­dance with IFRS for SMEs Sec­tion 10, made in re­spect of CWI Re­ceiv­ables amount­ing to $2.25 mil­lion (net) in the cur­rent year, and it was im­prac­ti­ca­ble to de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual pe­ri­od-spe­cif­ic ef­fects,” the au­dit stat­ed.

Sources said they had no idea what that writ­ten state­ment was re­fer­ring to, and they were of­fered no fur­ther clar­i­ty.

The TTCB’s fi­nan­cial trou­bles be­gan when its trea­sur­er, Keswah Chaitoo, a qual­i­fied ac­coun­tant turned whistle­blow­er in 2023.

The for­mer TTCB trea­sur­er re­port­ed to the po­lice that more than TT$500,000 in fund­ing was un­ac­count­ed for in the TTCB 2023 fi­nan­cials.

Fol­low­ing Chaitoo’s re­port, sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions since then.

The last ex­ter­nal, in­de­pen­dent au­dit the TTCB un­der­went was a 2018 foren­sic au­dit car­ried out by Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers.

There are var­i­ous kinds of foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion, such as “Project Barcelona”, which ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

There’s al­so an NGC au­dit in­to a spon­sor­ship arrange­ment that found that the funds were trans­ferred to oth­er projects by the TTCB with­out NGC ap­proval.

There are re­ports that al­so dis­cov­ered that in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the TTCB in its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2014 and 2015, in­clud­ing du­pli­cate re­port­ing of funds.

Ac­cord­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports’ in­ves­ti­ga­tions, over the last six years, be­tween 2019 and 2024, the TTCB re­ceived more than $30 mil­lion in tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter’s Sport & Cul­ture Fund (OPM­SCF) and the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SPORTT) and an­oth­er $29 mil­lion in fund­ing from CWI, which Guardian Me­dia Sports re­port­ed over the last cou­ple of weeks.