Over the last four years, be­tween 2021 and 2024, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB) re­ceived more than TT$29 mil­lion (US$4.4 mil­lion) in fund­ing from Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) for op­er­at­ing, tour and tour­na­ment ex­pens­es. Ac­cord­ing to Crick­et West In­dies’ an­nu­al au­dit state­ments, viewed by Guardian Me­dia, the TTCB’s al­lo­ca­tions from CWI in­creased by 69 per cent be­tween 2022 and 2024.”

The lo­cal board re­ceived $11.5 mil­lion in 2024, $9.5 mil­lion in 2023, $6.8 mil­lion in 2022 and an­oth­er $1.8 mil­lion in 2021.

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions dis­cov­ered that the TTCB has over fif­teen au­dits out­stand­ing for the CWI.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, the bud­gets sub­mit­ted for the out­stand­ing au­dits are worth around $20 mil­lion.

Four post-event au­dits are out­stand­ing for 2022, four for 2023 and an­oth­er sev­en from 2023 on­wards.

The TTCB was giv­en $11.2 mil­lion for tour and tour­na­ment ex­pens­es in 2022 and 2023.

In a 2023 email ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia Sports, Lu­cia Molyneaux, the Sec­re­tary of Crick­et West In­dies’ Au­dit, Risk and Com­pli­ance De­part­ment, wrote to five TTCB board mem­bers.

One of the re­cip­i­ents was TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath. Bas­sarath is al­so a CWI vice pres­i­dent.

CWI au­dit con­cerns and re­spons­es

“Good day TTCB,

I trust this email finds you well.

As it re­lates to the email trail be­low, we have not had any progress on the mat­ter of per­form­ing the post-event au­dits. We would be grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with the TTCB to dis­cuss your con­cerns.

“It is note­wor­thy that in ad­di­tion to the four pend­ing au­dits from 2022, we have four au­dits pend­ing as fol­lows:

CG Su­per 50, West In­dies Cham­pi­onships Round III to IV, West In­dies vs In­dia … and U-17 Re­gion­al Camp & Tour­na­ment.

We look for­ward to hear­ing from you soon.” Molyneux wrote.

In re­sponse, for­mer TTCB Trea­sur­er Kiswah Chaitoo wrote that the board will dis­cuss the post-event au­dits at an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to TTCB sources, Chaitoo in­tend­ed to com­plete the au­dits be­fore be­ing re­moved by the board. The for­mer trea­sur­er de­clined com­ment when ap­proached by Guardian Me­dia Sports for a re­sponse.

“The Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Board is copied on this email thread, as he has over­sight re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Sec­re­tari­at and al­so the two TTCB Di­rec­tors to CWI,” Chaitoo wrote in an email re­sponse to the CWI.

De­spite hav­ing au­dits out­stand­ing, the TTCB re­ceived an­oth­er $9.3 mil­lion for tour and tour­na­ment spend­ing in 2024.

Guardian Me­dia wrote to CWI Pres­i­dent Dr. Kishore Shal­low, CWI CEO Chris Dehring, the CWI Com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment and TTCB Pres­i­dent Bas­sarath seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the TTCB’s com­pli­ance with CWI’s fi­nan­cial pro­to­cols.

First­ly, Guardian Me­dia Sports asked whether the TTCB sub­mit­ted all re­quired au­dits to CWI for the pe­ri­od 2022 to present.

We al­so asked if the TTCB re­ceived the re­main­ing 25 per cent of fund­ing from CWI bud­gets due af­ter the com­ple­tion of post-event au­dits.

In re­sponse, CWI CEO Dehring said that he was not in a po­si­tion to speak to spe­cif­ic dis­burse­ments or au­dit sub­mis­sions at this time.

“I can con­firm that CWI con­tin­ues to en­gage with all ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards to en­sure full com­pli­ance with its fi­nan­cial poli­cies. Where there are de­lays or dis­crep­an­cies, ap­pro­pri­ate fol­low-ups are un­der­tak­en through the rel­e­vant in­ter­nal com­mit­tees. As you would ap­pre­ci­ate, cer­tain fi­nan­cial de­tails may be sub­ject to on­go­ing re­view, and it would be pre­ma­ture to com­ment on the specifics you’ve raised ahead of the com­ple­tion of those process­es.

“Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) re­mains com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and good gov­er­nance across all its mem­ber boards, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Crick­et Board (TTCB). Mat­ters re­lat­ing to fi­nan­cial re­port­ing and dis­burse­ment of funds are re­viewed through our in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms in ac­cor­dance with es­tab­lished pro­to­cols where ju­ris­dic­tion is es­tab­lished. How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to note Crick­et West In­dies does not over­see the op­er­a­tions of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al boards, as they func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly,” Dehring wrote.

Re­gion­al sources: Sys­tem can be ex­ploit­ed

Ac­cord­ing to re­gion­al crick­et sources, in­clud­ing TTCB sources, the event fund­ing process used by Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) can be ex­ploit­ed.

The Fi­nances and Bud­gets sec­tion of the Crick­et West In­dies’ con­sti­tu­tion states that the CWI and the agent (mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tion) shall agree on an event bud­get, with the CWI re­spon­si­ble for the agreed costs of host­ing and stag­ing the event.

“Un­less oth­er­wise agreed be­tween CWI and the Agent, the Event Bud­get shall be paid to the Agent in the agreed cur­ren­cy, in ac­cor­dance with the fol­low­ing pay­ment sched­ule:

• Four weeks be­fore the start of the event—50 per cent

• Two weeks af­ter the last match—25 per cent;

• Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the Ac­tu­al Cost Re­port and post-event au­dit, the out­stand­ing bal­ance of 25 per cent.

“The agent shall man­age all cost ex­pen­di­ture from the event bud­get, in ac­cor­dance with pru­dent best prac­tice. The Agent ac­knowl­edges and agrees that any un­der­spend shall be for the ben­e­fit of CWI and shall be the prod­uct of ef­fi­cient cost man­age­ment alone and shall not be achieved to the detri­ment of the qual­i­ty of the event… Any cost sav­ing achieved by the Agent in re­spect of any bud­get item shall not be ap­plied to any oth­er bud­get item un­less ap­proved in writ­ing by CWI,” the CWI con­sti­tu­tion stat­ed.

Re­gion­al crick­et sources said that, in the­o­ry, an agent can ex­ag­ger­ate an event bud­get by up to 200 per cent be­cause it is not ex­ceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for an agent to jus­ti­fy its ini­tial bud­get re­quest.

In re­ceiv­ing 75 per cent of the agreed fund­ing from CWI (at an in­flat­ed bud­get), they can cre­ate ex­cess fund­ing and for­go the re­main­ing 25 per cent that is on­ly sup­posed to be grant­ed af­ter an ac­tu­al cost re­port and an event au­dit.

Ac­cord­ing to the CWI 2024 au­dit, the re­gion­al body owed the TTCB $6.7 mil­lion in 2024. It was $13.5 mil­lion in 2023.

The sources said it is al­so pos­si­ble for par­ties to seek fund­ing from mul­ti­ple or­gan­i­sa­tions (CWI or the gov­ern­ment, for ex­am­ple) for the same event and cause. They called it “dou­ble or triple-dip­ping”.

On Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia Sports’ In­ves­tiga­tive Desk re­port­ed that, 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 and the Sports Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to con­cerned TTCB sources, the board has not been asked to ac­count for its spend­ing.

On May 8, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s Spe­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tion Unit (SIU) raid­ed the Cou­va of­fices of the TTCB.

In a sub­se­quent press re­lease, po­lice said they re­cov­ered key doc­u­ments to an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

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.

A fe­male staff mem­ber wrote a res­ig­na­tion let­ter ad­mit­ting to al­leged mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds. In the let­ter, she claimed that the amount could be be­tween $200,000 and $300,000.

TTCB’s no con­fi­dence against Chaitoo

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

The mo­tion came af­ter some TTCB mem­bers be­lieved Chaitoo act­ed in a man­ner that un­der­mined the board.

Sev­er­al cor­po­rate spon­sors paused or with­drew sup­port from TTCB com­pe­ti­tions be­cause of Chaitoo’s al­le­ga­tions.

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

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion “Project Barcelona” ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of pro­cure­ment, con­tract­ing and ex­pen­di­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

Mean­while, an NGC au­dit found that the spon­sor­ship funds were trans­ferred by the TTCB with­out ap­proval.

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

Con­tact­ed for com­ment over the last week­end, TTCB Pres­i­dent Az­im Bas­sarath said, in the af­ter­math of the po­lice raid, he sees no rea­son for him­self or any mem­ber of staff to re­sign.

Bas­sarath de­nied be­ing in­ter­viewed in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.