Pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board (TTCB), Az­im Bas­sarath, said he sees no rea­son for him­self or any mem­ber of staff to re­sign af­ter the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) raid­ed the TTCB’s of­fice in Cou­va on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Bas­sarath de­nied be­ing in­ter­viewed by the TTPS in con­nec­tion with an on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the TTCB.

In a re­sponse sent to Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk Sat­ur­day, Bas­sarath said the op­er­a­tions of the cur­rent board con­tin­ue.

“Giv­en the on­go­ing na­ture of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it would be en­tire­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate and ir­re­spon­si­ble to com­ment fur­ther or to en­gage with spec­u­la­tive ques­tions or un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by in­di­vid­u­als. We trust that the prop­er in­ves­tiga­tive process­es will take their course and the facts will be made clear in due time.

“It is im­por­tant to re­it­er­ate that the ac­tions tak­en by the po­lice to ob­tain doc­u­men­ta­tion from the TTCB of­fices formed part of stan­dard in­ves­tiga­tive pro­ce­dures in re­la­tion to the above, and not di­rect­ed at any mem­ber. Such ac­tions were con­duct­ed in re­sponse to the re­port and in pur­suit of gath­er­ing ev­i­dence re­lat­ed to the for­mer em­ploy­ee’s con­duct. We re­main ful­ly com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and up­hold­ing the in­tegri­ty of the TTCB. While un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ru­mours and mis­in­for­ma­tion may at­tempt to cast doubt, I as­sure you and the pub­lic that the TTCB re­mains fo­cused on its man­date to de­vel­op and pro­mote crick­et at all lev­els. And we will not be dis­tract­ed by base­less Claims,” he said.

As of Saur­day af­ter­noon, Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin said there were no up­dates to give about the case as yet.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, through sources close to the TTCB, that the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­volves of­fi­cials in the TTCB, the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) and an­oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fice.

In this on­go­ing se­ries "Stumped," Guardian Me­dia Sports will in­ves­ti­gate the cir­cum­stances that have left the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­spon­si­ble for the sport - that gave us some of the finest tal­ents the world has ever seen in Bri­an Lara, Ian Bish­op, Sunil Nar­ine, Dwayne Bra­vo, Samuel Badree, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pol­lard, and many oth­ers - in dis­ar­ray and un­der a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

As for­mer and cur­rent na­tion­al and West In­di­an crick­et play­ers told Guardian Me­dia Sports this week, the fu­ture of the re­gion’s beloved sport is at stake in T&T.

For­mer trea­sur­er Chaitoo mat­ter

In late 2023, whistle­blow­er and for­mer TTCB trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo re­port­ed to po­lice that up to $500,000 or more was miss­ing/un­ac­count­ed for from the TTCB’s fi­nan­cial ac­counts, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of an au­dit.

Chaitoo, a foren­si­cal­ly trained char­tered ac­coun­tant, re­port­ed in the 2023 AGM that he was un­able to ver­i­fy how $132,313 of TTCB funds up to Ju­ly 31, 2023 - orig­i­nal­ly al­lo­cat­ed for ad­min­is­tra­tion, clean­ing, match fees, train­ing and de­vel­op­ment, trav­el­ling, as well as of­fice and gen­er­al ex­pens­es—had been spent.

Board mem­bers told Guardian Me­dia that up­on this dis­cov­ery, the trea­sur­er said he be­gan to check the fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments for pre­vi­ous years and re­alised that more than $500,000 was un­ac­count­ed for.

A fe­male staff mem­ber wrote a res­ig­na­tion let­ter in which she ad­mit­ted to mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing funds. In the let­ter, she claimed that the amount could be be­tween $200,000 to $300,000. Sev­er­al board mem­bers told Guardian Me­dia that they be­lieve the true, fuller sto­ry of where the un­ac­count­ed-for funds are is be­ing ‘cov­ered up.’ They be­lieved she was tak­ing the fall for oth­er un­named and un­known peo­ple.

Chaitoo was then re­moved in a suc­cess­ful no-con­fi­dence mo­tion passed suc­cess­ful­ly by 35 votes for and 12 votes against.

The mo­tion came af­ter some TTCB mem­bers be­lieved Chaitoo act­ed in a man­ner that un­der­mined the au­thor­i­ty and con­tra­dict­ed the board’s con­sti­tu­tion. The mem­bers al­leged that Chaitoo pro­cured TTCB doc­u­ments and kept them with­out the ex­ec­u­tive’s au­then­ti­ca­tion; Made a re­port to the TTPS with the knowl­edge/ap­proval of the ex­ec­u­tive; Made state­ments to the me­dia at an AGM known to be un­true; And re­fused to at­tend a meet­ing of the Ex­ec­u­tive con­vened to in­quire in­to mat­ters of con­cern to the board aris­ing from his con­duct.

Chaitoo's ap­peal was un­suc­cess­ful

In a 2024 in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Sports, Win­ston Sobers, chair­man of the North Zone, de­scribed the out­come of the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion as a trav­es­ty.

“We had am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty last night to show spon­sors and the wider pub­lic that the board was se­ri­ous about good gov­er­nance. You can’t have an al­leged fraud take place at an in­sti­tu­tion, and the one thing you do is to get rid of the per­son who is the so-called whistle­blow­er. That, to me, rais­es eye­brows and sets off red flags be­cause how can you ex­plain to peo­ple why you would want to re­move some­one who came forth with the in­for­ma­tion, in­stead of get­ting to the bot­tom of that, you try to get rid of the trea­sur­er.

“That, to me, could send a clear sig­nal that the TTCB is not above board and could al­so send the sig­nal that we are cor­rupt, and I have a se­ri­ous prob­lem with that be­cause I’m a mem­ber of the board who rep­re­sents the North Zone. I want to put it on record that I vot­ed against the mo­tion be­cause I thought it was wrong and there was no ba­sis for it,” Sobers said.

Sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of Chaitoo’s al­le­ga­tions. As a re­sult, the Un­der-15, U-17 and U-19 com­pe­ti­tions were left with­out spon­sor­ship.

A lo­cal bank that spon­sored a youth com­pe­ti­tion last year opt­ed not to spon­sor the com­pe­ti­tion again, while a lo­cal busi­ness own­er, whose com­pa­ny al­so spon­sored an­oth­er youth com­pe­ti­tion last year and spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, in­formed the board that he would not be of­fer­ing spon­sor­ship again un­til a full au­dit is done in­to the TTCB’s fi­nances. He said he has not heard from the TTCB since mak­ing that de­mand last year.

Guardian Me­dia can al­so con­firm that Shell, which spon­sored youth crick­et for nine years, with­drew spon­sor­ship fol­low­ing the PWC au­dit.

When Guardian Me­dia Sports con­tact­ed Chaitoo, he said that he could not com­ment as the mat­ter is be­fore the courts.

The con­cerns raised by Chaitoo were not the first or on­ly mat­ter of fi­nan­cial con­cerns that have plagued the Board over the last sev­er­al years.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny Mil­lion $$$ deal

Through­out the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive’s reign, there have been sev­er­al cor­po­rate en­ti­ties, in­clud­ing the state, that in­ves­ti­gat­ed or au­dit­ed the TTCB af­ter dis­cov­er­ing mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tions and oth­er is­sues.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that a num­ber of well-known com­pa­nies have with­drawn spon­sor­ship over an al­leged fail­ure of the TTCB to ac­count for fund­ing or pro­vide an up­dat­ed au­dit on its ac­counts.

For many years, the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) of T&T has been a proud, key spon­sor for all things T&T crick­et.

Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s web­site, “Since 2012, we have been a spon­sor of the T&T crick­et team and the of­fi­cial T20 part­ner of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board and its de­vel­op­men­tal pro­grammes. This is part of NGC’s wider ob­jec­tive to de­vel­op crick­et at the youth club and na­tion­al lev­els.”

As re­cent­ly as last month, the com­pa­ny con­tributed $3 mil­lion to­wards the na­tion­al foot­ball team’s ef­fort to qual­i­fy for the 2026 World Cup in the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cana­da.

Guardian Me­dia Sports un­der­stands that NGC is one of many spon­sors that have opt­ed to ‘dis­tance’ its re­la­tion­ship with the TTCB in re­cent years.

The re­la­tion­ship changed af­ter a 2017 NGC au­dit of a spon­sor­ship agree­ment with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board.

The agree­ment was for the state com­pa­ny to pro­vide $13.35 mil­lion in fund­ing to the TTCB be­tween 2014 to 2016. The deal was sub­ject to a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU), which was sup­posed to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

The fund­ing, ac­cord­ing to the MOU, was to be used in the spon­sor­ship of sev­er­al lo­cal crick­et com­pe­ti­tions, as well as in the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion­al crick­et acad­e­my, grass­roots crick­et, um­pire train­ing, and the na­tion­al team.

The funds were to be dis­bursed in three tranch­es an­nu­al­ly to the crick­et board.

Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­tiga­tive Desk ob­tained a copy of the au­dit.

In Sep­tem­ber 2016, NGC’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is­sued an au­dit re­quest to the TTCB, cit­ing sig­nif­i­cant risks of mis­al­lo­ca­tion of funds, rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age, and in­suf­fi­cient val­ue for mon­ey due to the lack of suc­cess of the events host­ed by the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

The au­dit found that $2.98 mil­lion was not spent by the TTCB per the MOU. The funds were trans­ferred to oth­er cat­e­gories of spend­ing with­out ap­proval by NGC.

“The busi­ness unit’s mon­i­tor­ing con­trols ac­tiv­i­ties were in­suf­fi­cient to de­tect and re­port: funds amount­ing to TT$25,000 was over­paid in 2014 to TTCB; Funds were not uti­lized in agree­ment with the MOU; Funds un­der-uti­lized were uni­lat­er­al­ly re-al­lo­cat­ed by TTCB ac­count­ing to TT$1.46 mil­lion in 2014, TT$724,000 in 2015 and TT$797,000 in 2016.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, In­ter­nal Au­dit has not been pro­vid­ed with any in­for­ma­tion (doc­u­men­ta­tion) to il­lus­trate that when the breach oc­curred, it was rec­og­nized by the oth­er par­ties and mit­i­gat­ed since: NGC’s mon­i­tor­ing ac­tiv­i­ty did not iden­ti­fy that a breach oc­curred and as such NGC did not in­quire or sanc­tion; TTCB did not pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to NGC of its in­tent to re­lo­cate funds; TTCB af­ter re­lo­ca­tion and uti­liza­tion of said funds, did not seek NGC’s sanc­tion of same,” the au­dit stat­ed.

The re­port al­so found that in­cor­rect in­for­ma­tion was pro­vid­ed by the TTCB in its fi­nan­cial state­ments for 2014 and 2015, in­clud­ing du­pli­cate re­port­ing of funds.

“TTCB in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed showed that an amount of TT$100,000 paid by Cheque dat­ed 2016 Sep­tem­ber 7 (pay­ee– To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion) was re­port­ed twice with­in TTCB’s al­lo­ca­tion spread­sheets for 2015 as fol­lows: zon­al grants for To­ba­go, and in­clud­ed in Trinidad Zon­al Club Grants…These al­lo­ca­tions were not sup­port­ed by pay­ments,” it stat­ed.

NGC’s au­dit rec­om­mend­ed that man­age­ment should in­form the TTCB of the breach and con­sid­er re­cov­ery of the $3 mil­lion.

Fol­low­ing the au­dit, for­mer board mem­ber and crick­eter Daren Gan­ga sent a le­gal let­ter to TTCB pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath de­mand­ing an in­de­pen­dent foren­sic au­dit.

In 2020, High Court Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the NGC Au­dit Re­port of the TTCB.

And then there was an­oth­er mat­ter again in­volv­ing SporTT.

Pwc Project Barcelona In­ves­ti­ga­tion

There's al­so an­oth­er mat­ter in­volv­ing SporTT.

In 2018, Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers (Pwc) Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices con­duct­ed a foren­sic in­ves­tiga­tive re­port in­to al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at SporTT. The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was called Project Barcelona.

The TTCB and its pres­i­dent, Bas­sarath, were men­tioned in the re­port ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia.

The re­port list­ed Bas­sarath’s num­ber and that there were 33 voice record­ings be­tween Bas­sarath and for­mer SporTT Di­rec­tor Im­ran Jan. Guardian Me­dia can con­firm it is the same num­ber in use by the TTCB Pres­i­dent.

“Pwc was ap­proached by SporTT to ex­tend our in­ves­ti­ga­tions to in­clude an ex­am­i­na­tion of record­ed con­ver­sa­tions be­tween Jan and two in­di­vid­u­als ex­ter­nal to SporTT, in par­tic­u­lar, Az­im Bas­sarath (Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board Pres­i­dent) and Su­ruj Ra­goonath (Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer TTCB) - in or­der to iden­ti­fy any ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and po­ten­tial mis­con­duct in­volv­ing J and these in­di­vid­u­als rel­e­vant to SporTT,” Chap­ter 1: De­tailed Find­ings Re­gard­ing Sus­pi­cious Voice Record­ings stat­ed.

Pwc re­port­ed that in ex­am­in­ing the record­ed con­ver­sa­tions pro­vid­ed by whistle­blow­ers, that:

“Jan ap­peared to have shared de­tails re­gard­ing SporTT fund­ing to TTCB and oth­er na­tion­al sport­ing bod­ies with Az­im Bas­sarath and ap­peared to have been at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence the pro­vi­sion of SporTT fund­ing to TTCB. Jan ap­peared to be com­mu­ni­cat­ing his progress, or lack there­of, with seek­ing to so­lic­it fund­ing to TTCB to Bas­sarath.”

“Jan ap­peared to have shared SporTT doc­u­ments with Bas­sarath, which ap­par­ent­ly stat­ed how much was paid by SporTT to TTCB…It is im­por­tant to note that the unau­tho­rised dis­sem­i­na­tion of con­fi­den­tial SporTT in­for­ma­tion to ex­ter­nal par­ties could be a breach of Sec­tion 99 of the Com­pa­nies Act.”

“Jan al­so ap­peared to have so­licit­ed the as­sis­tance of for­mer SporTT Di­rec­tor RM to al­so at­tempt to make fund­ing avail­able to TTCB.”

“We al­so not­ed Jan at­tempt­ed to ap­prove pay­ments to TTCB by sign­ing ap­proval doc­u­ments on three sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions in Sep­tem­ber 2017 for amounts that ex­ceed­ed his ap­proval lim­it as a mem­ber of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee of the Board…The pay­ment vouch­ers in­di­cat­ed that pay­ments re­lat­ed to re­quests for cov­er­age of TTCB ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es for Jan­u­ary, Feb­ru­ary and March 2017 in amounts that ranged from $134,000 to $146,000.”

“We al­so not­ed that in Oc­to­ber 2017, Jan was ap­point­ed as a na­tion­al crick­et coach by TTCB, and text mes­sage ref­er­ences be­tween Az­im Bas­sarath and Jan ap­peared to sug­gest that this ap­point­ment was a re­ward for Jan’s ef­forts to in­flu­ence fund­ing to TTCB.”

When con­tact­ed for com­ment, SporTT CEO Ja­son Williams said he was aware of the raid at the TTCB’s of­fices on Thurs­day, but said he be­lieved the raid con­cerned al­le­ga­tions made by a for­mer board mem­ber.

Told the TTPS in­ves­ti­ga­tion may al­so in­volve a for­mer di­rec­tor of SporTT, Williams said he can’t speak in de­tail about that, but he con­firmed the di­rec­tor in ques­tion was re­moved.